by Christopher Stolle
(for Dad [died March 20, 2010], Grandpa Mathews [died March 28, 1996], and Grandpa Stolle [died March 22, 2012])
Grief is a wound
you keep bandaged,
the damage never healing,
never becoming an afterthought,
always a lingering presence,
a fierceness unyielding,
like a tyrant bellowing
for more destruction,
never getting enough. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Amy Fleury
Into the circle of chairs at the coffee shop
or church basement the newly bereft,
bedraggled and numb, are hauled ashore
by those long ago wrecked, those who know
the ropes, handing out Styrofoam cups
to be bitten and clutched. The coffee
isn’t bad for such a sad, uncharted place.
Salt water inundates us, so we pass around
the tissue box like a conch shell. All loss
is ours, we who are stranded together,
each with our own stormy story to share.
What unlikely castaways we make—professor,
pipefitter, nurse, veteran, and even undertaker.
Filed under Poetry
by Amy Fleury
Back in the bed of our gone son’s begetting
we drift on the raft of our grief. You join
our fingers together, your wedding band
glinting in the rivering dark. My tears salt
your shoulder. Your whiskers catch my hair.
We have only endured a week of ever-after. Continue reading
by V. P. Loggins
You see her float like grief
from room to room, wearing
a dress of stars, all shining in
the light of the cocktail party
and the laughter of her guests. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Fabiana Martínez
If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.
Plato, Phaedrus, 274c-275 b, Reginald Hackforth, transl., 1952.
“You will have to sign page four and make three copies. One for us, one for you and… I’m confident they will require one at the funeral home, Sir,” the big blonde hospital administrator with one missing fake nail pronounced matter-of-factly. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 