So many years since those Madison days. Forty years. My plane lands in what’s still a small airport. No Starbuck’s. The temperature is 32 degrees. I miss those days of beer and Shakespeare. You could buy pitchers at the Rathskellar for $2.75, and $1 of that was a deposit on the pitcher. The Rathskellar is…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ram
Local Writing
Small Kid Time Hawaii and Growing Up Local, you frequently Intersecting Circles with Folks You Meet in Longs. You have No Choice but to Follow Da Word In the Company of Strangers, Expounding the Doubtful Points with the Best of Honolulu Fiction, Kauai Tales and More Kauai Tales. Last Days Here, in the Islands Linked…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ram
February 14th Psalm
My sunny Valentine: So earnestly daft, So wickedly deft. Amen
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ram
2016 Year of the Red Monkey
In the monkey year of her first 12-year Chinese zodiac cycle, she was a sixth grade student comfortable in T-shirts and boy shorts that covered the crotch and zipped up past the hips. Weeks before sixth grade graduation she announced, “Mom, once I start seventh grade I’m going to dress like a slut.” Retaliating, I…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ram
Love at Last
There were times when you and Oakland saved me. Every time I needed saving, through the Madison years, I could drive to Oakland in twenty-four hours and feel at home. Remember the Oatmeal Minstrels? All those nights we ate your oatmeal cookies and played our guitars until the sun rose. That Audrey with the…
Bamboo Shoots Prompt for Year of the Ram
Year of the Ram writing contest for February : )
What? I thought I said we always take February off. What? That’s wrong. We always take March off. So here’s one last chance to kick writing butt in the Year of the Ram. Yup. We’re going up. This month you can write a haiku or a piece that is exactly 100 words or a piece…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ram
Mission: Creep
Waking up late into the night, As I sometimes do, I get up and eat a handful of mixed nuts And drink a small glassful of cold milk. Waiting for that to settle, I do some New Year’s resolution Balancing exercises. I’m facing out Onto the street Gyrating awkwardly on one leg, Window frames my…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ram
Kane, fingernail moon: a haiku
Kāne, tonight’s fingernail moon, gazes enviously upward at his illustrious neighbor, sun defiant Venus A false rivalry. An army of rain-streaked, leaden gray clouds assemble darkening the early dawn sky over Hilo Bay. No cheeseburger, no chips, no Pepsi, just good vibes of mana.
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ram
Those were the days, my friend…
Dad removes the fresh mochi from the mochi maker and slices it to near perfect squares for the ozoni that mom makes only at New Years. A memory breathes of a time when Japanese ceremonial tradition demanded pounding the mochi by hand–fathers lifting and dropping the heavy kine, resembling a giant mallet, into the sticky…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Ram
Just Another Tornado
My family and I were on our yearly camping trip. This time it was Kauaʻi, my father’s birthplace. We were stocking up on camping supplies at a small Mom-and-Pop store in Waimea. The store owner was an old high school friend of my dad’s. Their “good old day” talk was pretty boring. Wandering…