“Mister Lee, are you awake?” The thick, long blue curtains are pulled back, and light slips into the tiny room.…
Into the Woods
Jill and I are hiking Tantalus, and as is her wont, Jill’s decided to be a trailblazer. As we wander farther…
This Old Piano
When I sit down on our piano bench, the piano nearly 60 years old now, I am comfortable enough. I…
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,…
Violence
When he’d done something wrong, Jerry wouldn’t go home. “Wrong” could be a poor class proficiency report from school or…
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…
Forbidden Fruit
When I was a kid, I’d walk up my hill on the way home from school.There was a place halfway…
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…
Going Home
The first time I visited Korea, at age 65, I dropped out of the sky,a stranger in a strange land, catapulted…
The Fashion
That was your style for a while, a momentuntil the next idea hit you, what’s trending,your tastes turning like stiles,…
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…
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,…
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,…
Do Them Part
Someone wake him before he dreams of her again.On the shore, two with pants legs, their cuffs rolled upto save…
Traditional Change
It’s billed as A Match Made in Heaven, a revered traditional Korean love storycarried down from a bygone age to…
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,…
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,…
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…
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…
Lanning Lee 