I was raised a good Lutheran, so there are two things I know for sure. One, if it looks like bread and wine, then that’s all it is, bread and wine, and two, lying is very bad. And I speak from experience, guiltily, that it is very, very bad if you lie during a conversation…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
False Wiliwili — Part One
Anna is a second semester freshman. I’m entering my final semester as a senior, chomping at the bit, eager to get out of UH and head for the graduate program in English at the University of Wisconsin. I’ve heard from everyone that it will be colder than hell in Madison, but I don’t care. I’m…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Midwest Aloha
Four fresh faced white Wisconsin farm lads maybe raised on this morning’s milk and cheese and home churned butter rocket their beat-up red sedan through the city of Madison Perhaps looking for action different from daily farm chores they slow down to visit me on the side of the highway one, maybe 18, rolling down…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Hawai’i Sonnet 63 (for KL)
I race my children on the wind again to be a child in time and tag the kid out now, too slow now slowing to catch, fading in my drawing time then this time if I will run, then run, and run again not after them, but for them and for me back then, I…
Bamboo Shoots awards
Year of the Pig contest for July : )
Ho da traumas in da Bahamas. My computa wen maké, so get all kine scrambling an screaming an cursing goin on ova hea at da Bamboo Shoots undagroun fort an bah an grill. Had to overcome ma hahtache wit plenny beahs. Now I stay sobah enuff, an I not crying too much, so time fo…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
ON HE RODE — Chapter 14
So the way this works is you slip this GM Key to Greater Value into this chrome slot here to the right of the steering column, then you turn it so it’s exactly straight up and down and the dashboard lights, needles, and gauges are alive and talking to you. Then you push the clutch…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
there was no one stronger or smarter no one I admired more, loved more when I was very young but this is 1978 I’m living in Madison, Wisconsin and my dad has surprised me with a visit he’s on his way to Louisiana to check out fishing boats he might buy for his big tuna…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Waikiki
It was nice, seeing Hawaiian music in Waikiki last night. It was the group, Native Pearls. Mihana Aluli and Kanoe Cazimero, on guitar and ʻukulele, with piano accompaniment by Kit Ebersback. Funny, the Blue Note club entertainment coordinator was saying hello to everyone before the show. She asked me what made me interested in coming…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Toeenjambment
Sunbendsgoldacrossoldtoes.
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Pig
Good Reader
Maile has become a voracious reader, and her appetite for books keeps growing. We’ve picked through the library offerings so we’re now buying books. I’ll not lie, feeding her literature habit has become costly, and because of it, I almost always find myself in a situation where I live paycheck to paycheck. But I don’t…