by J. Alan Nelson
The hospice room smells like antiseptic
and the ghost of cigarettes she swore she quit in ’89.
Everyone pretends this is normal,
the way we pretend the body isn’t a house
slowly evicting itself,
one lamp at a time. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Bianca Ambrosino
I was an anxious child. Especially at night.
I couldn’t sleep in the dread alone, so I
stayed awake. Thinking about not looking
for monsters under the bed.
I felt shut out of everything. I felt
the locked doors. I sent out my signal, but
no one monitored my frequency. They just
skipped over the static, tuned out of me and
into some bell clear station not on my dial. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Sean Thomas Dougherty
The way the light falls
x xx on the snow in the backyard
& the shadows
from the fence
x x xxxx like lines of a music staff,
& the criss cross footprints
of the dogs are notes,
x xx xx ones you can almost read,
& you begin to hum, Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Cela Xiè
影 I am a man man; in the mirror, my nose
实 is a razor held to the air, for to kill
彡 is a virtue; I am a man man, my beard
虚 hides my throat, for I am invulnerable; Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Lee Cooper
It was a good year for mangoes,
when we lived on rice, canned tuna,
Kool-Aid with too little sugar,
and the mangoes everyone gave us. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 