Hawai‘i Literature & Art
— Since 1978 —
A free spirit (FS) with decades of control freak (CF) experience shares defusing techniques with examples, in order of increasing sophistication or infraction severity. Caution: Your results may vary; favorable outcomes are not guaranteed. As rules and rituals vary widely among CFs, so do consequent triggers. RECTIFY. Example: You have opened the “wrong” end of…
Typing but I’m tired. So I lie on the carpet. Let my hair sprawl on the floor. Strands of a black silk, complex web. Huli onto my stomach and gather the fallen hair. Press my palms onto the floor. Focus on my hand moving in a circular motion into a cocoon. I huli back …
Lines to board aircraft Do not compare with the line To buy fireworks. eyk 0258 12;26/2021 At 2:50 AM in the morning after Christmas Day, the line to buy fireworks stretched all the way around the old Foodland, Pearl City and extended into the parking lot. All waiting to buy several hundred dollars worth of…
The gown dwarfs the little boy, the cap extending a head-width-and-a-half on either side. He tries to smile, head atilt, but the sun is in his eyes, and at an age so directed, so often, all he can muster is a stiff, squinty, baring of primary teeth. Next to him, a baby with a head…
The view outside my window whose sill upon which Hello Kitty sits, is that of a large magnolia tree. This tree was likely planted by the previous owner of this house, a view witnessed by his widow before a stroke caused her collapse unto an unforgiving flagstone floor. I don’t know if she’d been embalmed…
The winds of the storm front blew down the blossoms of a tree near my office and scattered them over the grass. When the rains came, the downpours flooded and soaked everything. Sodden tree blossoms, Lie scattered over the grass bodies of the slain. eyk 12/7/2021. The same storm, after passing, gave us some beautiful…
My tutu She’s building, fountains Shooting higher than the tallest ʻōhiʻa tree in the forest. Her fountains spit rocks and glass Her hemo-skin anger is unbridled. Her wiry tresses snap into myriad fragments of needles and glass floating floating carelessly on a current of hemo-skin heat and wind downwards, downwards, towards rainy Hilo. Her hair…
My Father’s Laugh I heard my Father laugh the other day, It was same broken “heh, heh, heh” That issued from a half crooked grin As he perused some new silliness I some how managed to get in. I realized, With a start, That the laughter was coming from me. I miss my Dad. So…
It was a big moment in his life, when he first learned where he could buy a watch at a great price. He was a watch man, owned many. Always before then he’d paid big money, even thousands for a nice one, but that was here in the US. It was in Korea and in…
Two isolated capitals, initials, abbreviations, codes, symbols — perhaps a prestige logo? Or complete and utter nonsense? Or maybe the beginning of a word or phrase, the remainders of which got lost along the way from conception to realization, still seeking completion? Or complete erasure? Letters skipped, skimped, skimmed, skinned? Wait! I hear it forming…