Boy, wassamattah? I no can skip. Fo what you gotta skip. Maybe hop or jump. But skip no need. Fo da May Day Maypole Dance. Try show me. I no can. See. Hmm. You know why, you starting off on da wrong foot. You stay left hand, eh? Jes start on da uddah side. Nevah…

Hawaii was not yet a state when ten cents bought: A spit and shine to infantry double buckle combat boots by scrawny Filipino plantation boys; Two Hershey chocolate bars shared six ways; A trade school education paid for with the minted alloys of silver and copper amassed over the years, swelling a single sock that…

Chapter One Call me crazy . . . for even thinking about it. God or no-God? Why wouldn’t it make a difference? I’m sure His hand was seriously in play that time Evers and I scored our famous ten-dollar lid at the olden golden International Marketplace, that masterpiece of 60’s Waikiki funk, the whole karmic…

The vendors are swarming us. “I see your future,” she says, grabbing at my arm. “You like know? One hundred yuan.” I glance at her. She has coke-bottle thick glasses. Can she see anything? I pull my arm away. “Bu yao!” “Fifty yuan.” I feel my shirt pocket to make sure my wallet’s still there….

A Bird in Hand On a cloudless summer day she flew into my life and rested her head in my hand with the weight of a butterfly. She spoke of love in another life and one to come. Her beauty was carved from ice composed in the kitchen danced like a gypsy to flames on…

You play basketball eh? Yeah, but we junk. I evah told you our basketball team went from last place to first? Cause of Kau Yuk. Like da red pork? Dats his name, Kau Yuk? Yeah. We call him dat cause he look like kau yuk. Lotta fat, little bit meat, and red all ovah. He…

The weather forecast called for thunder storms. An ominous beginning for an outdoor nuptial ceremony. Dawn emerges with light showers. By mid-morning, light bursts through a rift in the clouds. Patches of puddles mirror blue. White chairs align neatly on a lush lawn of green facing grape vines in a cultivated field of monochrome brown….

In some old boxes of stuff I haven’t looked at for decades, I find a small packet of pristine snapshots, six altogether, of a much-younger me. It surprises me to see how much younger, yet how familiar. In two of them, I’m picking wild raspberries on a camping trip in BC. Another has me in…