—Uncle, how come you wearing da Burger King crown? –Somebody went ask me if I had corona. I said yeah, I get one crown. —I tink dey meant da disease. –I no mo disease. I no mo da plague. No blame me. No burn down my house. I’m okay. —Burn down your house? –Long time…
Bamboo Shoots offshoot
The April Writing Contest is on the BRP Facebook page :)
Find Monday through Friday writing prompts there, and post your entries there too : ) Here’s the link: Monthly Writing Contest Page on Facebook
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Coloma, Wisconsin 1977
Coloma, Wisconsin 1978 There is not much left to do today. This morning we were replacing fence posts. Bob and I have pulled stumps all afternoon, he driving the tractor, I tying off the thick chain around what’s left of the dead trees. Right now I’m in the brush surrounding the house, cutting some tall…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
ON HE RODE — Chapter Twenty-Two
Liquidity. English teachers are not good sources of information about this term. What they (we) don’t know can’t hurt them (us), but I’d guess that if they knew much about liquidity they wouldn’t be English teachers. But here we go. Liquidity is money. When you get more, you liquidify . When you get less, you…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Haiku
big, empty corners what’s lost returns in pieces a heart fills with dust
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Lawaiʻa
This is the same spot Uncle used to bring me as a kid, over by the black rocks on the edge of the reef. The first time he brought me here, we caught so many we sent the smaller ones back. Auntie couldn’t believe her eyes. She said we were God’s disciples. Since then, the…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
ON HE RODE — Chapter Twenty-One
“Ubiquity,” on the other hand, has no definable history with me. I don’t know where I learned it or where I’d ever use it. Omnipresence, I guess. Everywhere at once. God-like. Ubiquitous. In the presumed natural order of things, all things are perpetually connected into one universal entity of which everything is a contributing part….
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Loko ʻIa
We were waist deep in a lo’i, stamping it down and planting taro cuttings. A man wearing a straw hat and malu supervised. One of the elders had his baby fastened to his back with a green sash. His baby’s toes were dipped in chocolate-colored mud. After lunch, we rolled boulders across the makeshift bridge…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Among the Del Norte Redwoods
I stand at the base of a venerable redwood, Put my hand on its rough, knowing skin. I feel I have to. I cannot say why. Shafts of sunlight pour down from the distant sky, Like light through the rose window of an old cathedral. Once I brought Lauren here. We had drifted apart by…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
A Helpful Kind
He’s always thinking about other people, more particularly, what he can do for this family. Barbeque perhaps, bake some muffins, rake leaves, wash car, babysit, give lychee, mangoes, avocados. Every morning he watches their house while he sips his coffee, catching snatches of their lives through the windows. How they are so busy, making breakfast,…