“Lucky You Live Hawaii”                                by Dennis Nakano * * * * * Bio: “Lucky You Live Hawaii” was staged by Kumu Kahua Theatre at the Kennedy Lab Theater, and also ran at the Leeward Community College Theater in 1976.

“On Being Local”                                by William Stafford           All events and experiences are local, somewhere. And all human enhancements of events and experiences — all the arts — are regional in the sense that they derive from immediate relation to felt life.           It is this immediacy that distinguishes art. And paradoxically the more local the feeling…

Leaving                      by Cathy Song Wahiawa is still a red dirt town where the sticky smell of pineapples being lopped off in the low lying fields rises to mix with the minty leaves of eucalyptus in the bordering gulch. We lived there near the edge where the orchids grew huge as lanterns overnight and the…

Precious                     by Darrell H.Y. Lum            On Mama's bureau in a gold frame, almost hidden by the baby and graduation pictures is the yellowing picture of Goong-goong when he was young. Sometimes I bend all the other pictures over to take a good look at you, Goong-goong, behind that glass, standing before your blackboard of…

The Shrine                     by Jody Manabe                                                             I speak of him, father, because he is                                                             There with his hands in his pockets, in the end                                                             Of the garden listening to the turning                                                             Wheel that is not there, but it is the world,                                                             Father, that I do not understand.                                                                                                                                   – W.S. Merwin                                                                                                                                    “On the Subject of Poetry”…

Communion                      By Patsy S. Saiki            It was quiet, deathly quiet, and that was strange, for Morio Tamura's life had always been full of sounds. There had been the crickets and cicadas on the Tamura farm in Japan, and the rustle of canefields and harsh commands of foremen on the sugar plantation on Hawaii….

Ass Why Hard                     by Garrett Kaoru Hongo We sit out on the concrete slab of our backyard patio, catching the sun sifting through apricot and lemon trees, both of us studying: him, stacks of books high as the egg crates we piled in back of the Hongo Store; me, my sports page and guide to…

Inheritance            by wanda fujimoto my grandmother died                                          before I had a face she reclaims me now with silence                          and a brown photograph:                                  her kimono, hair, face,                                  the instep of her turned-in foot I have no stock in this place the woman in the picture is                                          the sole estate of…

Nowadays Not Like Before                               by Tony Lee           Danny stretched his massive body along the wooden bench that he often used as a bed. It was a windy night and he covered himself with an old shower curtain, feeling the warm plastic cling to his sweaty arms. He really did not mind the cold weather. The…

Congratulations! Here are the August “whatevah” winners selected from entries posted before Midnight, August 31, GMT Aloha again to all of you, and mahalo, again, for your entires in the first Great BR Short-Short Story Contest. Here are the “whatevah” winners for August. Each will receive a $10 Bamboo Bucks credit to use at the…