by Josephina Hu
“A girl,” I read aloud, “found herself in a strange room, where the ceiling was sky and the walls open air. In the center of the room stood a lone mountain, and its solemn shadow obstructed all to her left. On the right was a forest of flowering trees, and among them, in the distance, an apparition. The girl decided to venture into the forest.” Continue reading
by Bethany Bruno
The first thing my mother left me was a jar. Wide-mouthed, Mason glass, cloudy at the rim. She pressed it into my hands the morning she stopped speaking. Her lips moved like pale paper fluttering in the wind.
“Keep it closed,” she mouthed. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Nicholas Claro
Years ago, when my father was still alive, I watched him put a cigar out on a kid’s cheek.
I say “kid,” but he was probably closer to twenty than twelve. That made him adult enough.
“He was acting like a dumbass kid,” my father told me later. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Anastasia Campbell
The light dances in these streets, bounces from building to building. Loud Moroccan sun, loud even in December, has been beating on this intersection like on a drum, and is now leaving. Pedestrians are picking up their pace; cars look as if they hiccup while attempting to move. The whole town of Tangier is just like this light; it is just like the sea it abuts –after a day of escapade it looks for a flat surface to retreat to. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Amanda Hays Blasko
We’re poor until Graham almost dies.
Like many things, it starts simply enough—we’re outside in the sun, waiting in line for the new barbeque place. The restaurant presents as a mom and pop but is actually run by a megacorp, and it’s so committed to its “small business” aesthetic that people wait in line for hours for the business to open, hoping to receive a slab of paper-wrapped meat before it runs out and the line disperses. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 