This Old Piano

When I sit down on our piano bench, the piano nearly 60 years old now, I am comfortable enough. I … More

The 38th Parallel

I’m standing next to my Uncle Wonnie.  He’s peering through a viewing slot in the bunker.  The opening is about six inches, … More

Violence

When he’d done something wrong, Jerry wouldn’t go home. “Wrong” could be a poor class proficiency report from school or … More

And this, too, is Paradise

Here in paradise they’ll paytake me to Hawai‘i neiHome of Diamond Headpearly shells from the oceanTourists negotiate the poornight and … More

Forbidden Fruit

When I was a kid, I’d walk up my hill on the way home from school.There was a place halfway … More

The Ending’s Beginning

This is the end of it, I think, standing stiff after 7 hours in the air,the snaking line of terminal … More

Going Home

The first time I visited Korea, at age 65, I dropped out of the sky,a stranger in a strange land, catapulted … More

The Fashion

That was your style for a while, a momentuntil the next idea hit you, what’s trending,your tastes turning like stiles, … More

Past Judgment at Starbuck’s

I don’t know you, but I’ll go ahead and guessoddly, measure you out in teaspoons, tick-tock,another spoon and dip and … More

For a Moment

They’re all young, blonde university students,have an intelligent look, wear sweatshirts,NYU, Brown, Syracuse, places that requireacademic effort prior to entry, … More

It’s Wednesday, it’s raining, and the dog needs to go out.

Billie – I’ll call her Billie – sings her soft blues now,not a bark or a howl, but a throaty, … More

Do Them Part

Someone wake him before he dreams of her again.On the shore, two with pants legs, their cuffs rolled upto save … More

Traditional Change

It’s billed as A Match Made in Heaven, a revered traditional Korean love storycarried down from a bygone age to … More

Hand in Glove

Korea’s a glove, the fingerless kind.A palm rests snug in it, the half warm, half clean, partprotected from the elements, … More

The Myth of Every Hope Fulfilled

From the top of the Gwangbok Lotte Department StoreI can see the Yeongdo(daegyo) Draw Bridge crossing Busan Harbor.From this height, … More

The Closest Shave, my third Lt. David Chan Hawai’i-based crime story, is now available on Amazon

Man Beats Mail, No Charges Pending

The mail I sent to myself from Koreacame to Hawai‘i slower than I’d guessed.I am no longer there, I’m now … More

Will you honor this price? he asks

In my record store days, so hard to forget the bad,mostly race-related incidents back in the wild Midwest,haunting me when … More

“Get Your Motor Running,” Chapter 15 of my second memoir, is now available on the Kindle Vella platform.

Murder, He Dreamed

Ever feel like you should be on trial for something?With what we get away with over our life’s course,do you … More