by Misty Yarnall
“Do you want to light it?” Uncle Mark pinches the top of a Chinese lantern. He pulls a cigarette lighter from his jean jacket pocket. My mother and aunt sit in Adirondack chairs on the back deck. Smoke and sparklers choke the air. Continue reading
by Leo Coffey
I never told you this before, but we knew about the pills. Jacob, Uncle Tommy, James, all of us. That night you came inside to rest. The rest of us were outside shooting fireworks by the barn. It was the Fourth of July and the air smelled like hotdogs and burnt wax. I drank one too many Mountain Dews and had to pee so bad I ran inside with one hand gripping my crotch and the other holding a Roman candle. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
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 Dan Morey
I got her email in August:
Hey. How long’s it been? Five years? Ten? It’s weird. A year is like nothing now. Remember how endless a year was in high school? Freshman, sophomore…being a senior was so far in the future you could hardly imagine it. And every year meant something new. This is the year you learn to drive and this is the year you go to Junior Prom and this is the year you take the SATs. Now life is just one big blur of sameness. Time slipping away as we repeat our boring routines over and over.
by Vivian Lawry
I was my younger sister’s maid of honor when she married her high school sweetheart a year after graduation, and fifty years later I was her matron of honor when she married him again—and I hope to tell you that finding an appropriate outfit for a sixty-something matron of honor was no easy task— Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 