Hawai‘i Literature & Art
— Since 1978 —
Use any ideas you come up from these excerpts as writing prompts. Let your mind wander, and let’s write. Scales glisten; pink whiskers jut out. Some are the color of mud, others recall the embroidery of coats placed on babes one-month old. Fat, round, small: they lay on the crushed ice, stall after stall….
October Words (Sing to the tune of “Battle of New Orleans”.) The Buckaroo says we should take him by surprise And write whatever words we see Within our inner eye, A challenge aimed my way, it seems, like, “Catch this where you are,” A bucking knuckleball he hurls, White lightning in a jar. (Stop singing.)…
When I started getting interested in girls, I used to go bananas over the chicks in my school but could never seem to score any of them. I’d watch movies every night and study how the guys on TV would always pick up the chicks. They made it look so easy. I tried some of…
(At 5:10 pm Saturday in Honolulu, Hawaii, it is 5:10 am Sunday in Paris, France), a twelve-hour parenthesis conjoining (this week’s last day with last week’s first) or vice-versa (first day of this, final day of previous, depending on whether you stand in Paris or Honolulu facing east or facing west). By all accounts, their…
Stop the Clock Benevolent Time sat cross-legged on the mantle smiling, saying she’d push it over, her index finger often faking flicking it, when, to my surprise, this Time she did, a warmest look, punctuated by the sound of shattering glass as my clock fell to the floor and crashed, Time finally fracturing my need…
If we hike up the mountain far enough, You and I will discover the shipwrecks, The beautiful grottoes where orchids Have grown in the boneyards. From “Hiking by Moonlight,” by Tino Ramirez, Bamboo Ridge, The Hawaii Writers’ Quarterly, No. 1, December 1978, New Moon (https://dspace.lib.hawaii.edu/handle/10790/5207) * * * * * There was a clock on…
Lucky for me, the car never hit the bike and the ditch flattened out to cushioning undergrowth. My great black Dutch ditch-bike was a girder on wheels, impervious to bending or breaking, and, like a full-body splint, all my guts and gizzards stayed more or less securely in place while lightly skimming over the handlebars…
I notice her here this evening, watch her closely, intently listening to a fly buzz and bump up against the screen. We’re all at this party we wished we wouldn’t have to attend, but there’s no excuse, so we all finally show up like flame-drawn moths fluttering in. The music begins, an old song I…
–Uncle, I had test today. –Oh? What kine test? –Math and English. Da standardized test, everybody gotta take um at da same time. Two hours. –You worried? –Litto bit. –Me too, I had test today. –What kine test? You no go school. –All kine test. Erryting. All da tests combine erryting into one blood test….
–Boy, what means “lock down?” –Supposed to stay home except fo essential tings. Not supposed to go out eat, go beach… –Jes like jail den. –Yeah. –But if you in jail, you lock up. And if you foget your keys, you lock out. Why dey no call um lock in, cuz you lock inside? No…