by Meg Weston
For forty years I brought armloads of anthuriums
to the rim of a crater lake far from home, to curry favor
with a youthful goddess. Those sexy, heart-shaped flowers
with penis-like spadix, lay limp against the gaping black
of Halemaumau, hidden beneath a crust, hints of heat
in steam vents and cracks like etchings on the surface. Continue reading
by Jan Walker
O`ahu, January 2000
A soft silver moment crosses the sand on Kailua Beach as sun burns through clouds at the horizon. Turquoise swaths slash the azure sea, a rose blush dusts the sky. I’m running at water’s edge, aware of sharp sand and chilly water, and a sense of Dad beside me, reassuring me that leaving my mainland home, moving to Kailua to care for Aunt Meg, is the right choice for this tangled time in my life.
My head turns, as though by Dad’s hand, to view the Ko`olau Mountains, veiled in morning haze, where he’s conjured an image of the Rain Shelter in Lyon Arboretum. Dad’s never been to these islands, never seen that shelter, but there it hovers as he says, in my head, Go there, Eve. Go now.
by Jonathon Medeiros
A kumu is a teacher.
She is a tree, the base, the trunk, the root,
The source, the beginning of a braid.
She is a plant in the mud.
Kūmū is a fish. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Eric Paul Shaffer
Paradise, friends, is a joke played by poets
on patrons, the restless, and the gullible.
Paradise leaves nothing to be desired,
everything to the imagination. Paradise is
a hole in the head, in the heart, in the planet Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Heidi Turner
Lydia tried floating on her back, like she’d seen in movies, but it wasn’t relaxing in the actual ocean. The sun was far too bright overhead, and the warm water rocked her enough to make it impossible to tell if she was drifting faster than was safe, or if a wave was coming. She could feel the grains of sand exfoliating all the nooks and crannies of her bikini and the surf shorts she always wore—another experience that sounds pleasant but isn’t. She rolled over onto her stomach, only dipping below the surface for a moment in the practiced motion. Her limbs dangled down into the water, deep enough that her toes could only scrape the bottom at her full height. She turned her head to the sky and breathed. Face down in the water, she could feel her lungs pushing her body against the pull-down of the ocean. I bet I look like I’ve drowned. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 