by Mandira Pattnaik
When you feel neglected, you should devour your husband instead of starving yourself, instead of wondering what ruins you haunt: says mother when I tell her about a slap, a chipped tooth, about brothers-in-law ogling, about mysterious cold beef and fermented rice beer in the husband’s bag, Continue reading
by John Picard
“Please order a drink everyone,” Kate said. “I mean it, Chuck. I know how you like your vodka martinis.”
“Are you sure?” Laura said.
“Positive. We talked a lot about social drinking at the Center. A big part of recovery is abstaining around other drinkers. This’ll be good practice.”
“I’ll feel awfully funny if I do,” Laura said.
“I’ll feel awfully funny if you don’t. I’m serious. The house chardonnay is excellent here.”
“Let me just say, Katie,” Chuck said, “that you’re one of the strongest, bravest women I know.”
I could feel some pressure on my right temple. I couldn’t be around Chuck, a car salesman with the personality to match, without a getting a headache.
“Anyway,” Laura said, “you look fantastic. You really do.”
“I lost sixteen pounds. That’s what cutting a thousand liquid calories out of your daily diet will do.” Continue reading
by Katrina Dahl Vogl
Cleo has let the Hiss get too loud again. It’s been two days now since she’s had any money, since she got high, and the Hiss is hissing. Saying, it’s time. So an hour ago she caved and called Louie King, and now he’s sprawled out on her bed with his boots still on, whining that Miro said he’d be home soon, right? Cleo doesn’t answer him. He knows just as well as she does that when a dope dealer says fifteen minutes they mean an hour, and when they say ‘soon’ they mean, this’ll take however long it takes. Continue reading
by Norman Sakai
Back in 1960 when this story takes place, I was Japanese. There’d been pressure since the war for us to say “Japanese-American” but that idea had never grown legs. For one thing, most of us lived in low-income, polyglot neighborhoods like East Los Angeles, where your race — I mean your real race, not some construct — was the most important thing about you. For another, we’d just spent the war in internment camps. The hyphenated term seemed a little pointless after that. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Robert Garner McBrearty
My teenage son says that money doesn’t matter, and on one level I get it, but if you’ve ever been short of it, you know it does.
I point out that we stay in nicer hotels now when we travel, and he admits that’s sort of pleasant, though he says, and I know it’s true, that he’d be fine staying in a hostel. In fact, he might prefer it.
We eat at better restaurants now, I tell him, and he says that is enjoyable, but he’d be fine really with just about any grub, beans from a can, maybe some tuna, and again, I know it’s true for him.
But you wouldn’t want to sleep out on the streets, right? Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 