Part One It was taking longer than it should for sister-in-law Maya to get her kids ready for the drive to Hilo airport after a week-long family visit. Lost socks, missing underwear, bathroom emergencies, and a stubbed and bloody toe, the usual things when you travel with kids. Still, it seemed to be taking longer…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ox Writing Contest for July 2021
How It’s Hanging
Garfield likes lasagna like I like lasagna, and while I can’t finish a full tray in one gulp, I can work my way through a good sized slab at a decent clip. Garfield perches atop my computer screen, hanging over the back by his suction cups, as he has for some thirty plus years, ever…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ox Writing Contest for July 2021
Encounters
I wonder if local people Shudder more than others When they read Kafka’s Metamorphosis— You know the one where the guy turns into a cockroach. Local folks are afraid of B-52 bombers that’s why I mean, come on, the guy’s not going turn Into the small, German roach It’s way too small. If…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ox Writing Contest for July 2021
What Not to Buy for Lunch (for your parents)
It looked like white rice— packaged with brown nuggets of karaage fried chicken in a bento box. Mom didn’t like its color. Dad said it tasted funny. Judgements made by some distant threshold for rice palatability. Was it because the rice failed to glisten like dewdrops? Hit the high notes of sweetness? The texture altered…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ox Writing Contest for July 2021
Diacritical is critical
Testing… testing ʻokina and kahakō Kaʻaʻawa and kūpuna Hōʻike da ʻokina and kahakō
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ox Writing Contest for July 2021
A Maze
It’s good for a local island boy to see life from somewhere else once in a while. Madison was an eye-opener, the whiteness of it all, snow for the first time, and people who saw me as a snowflake of color, fluttering through their dirty looks and smiling sing-song taunting greetings. It’s like being set…
Bamboo Shoots Prompt for Year of the Ox Writing Contest for July 2021
August 2021 Year of the Ox Writing Prompts : )
Okay, for August, it’s any length any style again. Here are the topics: 1. Write a 5-page monologue or 10-page scene based on this prompt: a confrontation between a person and a cockroach, then submit it to the Kumu Kahua Go Try Play Write Contest for August: https://www.kumukahua.org/gotryplaywrite * * * * * 2. From…