Jungle Planet and Other New Stories • winter 2004 (vol. 16, no. 2) • 216 pages, illustrated

Among the writers are Lysley Tenorio, Bay Anapol, David Borofka, Eddie Chuculate, Dionisio Velasco, Mark Panek, Robert Barclay, Wayne Karlin, James D. Houston, and Andrew Lam from the U.S.; Huzir Sulaiman from Malaysia; Marcelino Freire from Brazil; Lakambini A. Sitoy from the Philippines; Kim Yongha from Korea; and Manjushree Thapa from Nepal.

Artwork from Carlos Almaraz, David Botello, Margaret García, Wayne Alaniz Healy, Adan Hernández, Ester Hernández, Leo Limón, John Valadez, Patssi Valdez, and George Yepes has been reproduced for this issue. Some pieces are featured below in their original color. Back-cover art: John Valadez, Pool Party. Front-cover art: Carlos Almarez, Sunset Crash.

Guest editors are Bruce Fulton, Eric Gamalinda, Leigh Saffold, Arthur Sze, and John Whalen-Bridge. Translators include Claude Henry Potts and Dafna Zur.

The day Kit told Jon about her mother's illness, he held her face and traced her wet eyes with his fingers. Now Kit cannot possibly tell him the truth: that she is not crying for her mother. She is crying because he is a man who has lived in too many places, and none of them was home. Her mother is dying and all she feels is relief. She has wanted her mother to disappear since she was a child; she has willed this final illness. Now she crawls back into bed. She places Jon's hands on her, on the narrow curves between her hips and breasts. His hands are astonishingly warm.

—from “A Stone House”
by Bay Anapol

George Yepes • La Pistola y El Corazon (The Pistol and The Heart)

This story is a fable of hope. Read it through to the end, but don't rush. It's a children's story because it's dreamlike. Grownups know what they're doing; they know what they're reading, what they're seeing, and what they want to be when they. Grow up.

Setting aside these infamous words, let's move right along with this tale, which takes place in the Good Country. To be more precise, it takes place in a city of children and teenagers. I'm not really used to making such a distinction between kids and teenagers because to me they're all just babies. Some believe they're all just devils. But what can you do about it? This is not the moral of my story. What I really want is for you, the reader, not to forget my exotic tale. In the Good Country, everything is exotic, depending, of course, on your. Perspective.

—from “Three Stories”
by Marcelino Freire

Leo Limón • Wild Ride

Five hundred people had died, he told her, on the ridge above theirs. She had heard the story many times, but it seemed forever fresh to her, perpetually fascinating. The families had built their homes on what they thought was solid rock, but the ground had been layered with loose material that soaked up the rains like a sponge. One morning it had all turned to muck, and the pavements had cracked and fallen inward, houses and trees and cars, sliding down into the soup.

Five hundred people—mothers, fathers, children in their starched school shirts—entombed within rock, he said.

But that had been a long time ago, and now engineers were rebuilding, carting tons of rubble and rock to even up the ground.

"Nowhere left to put the houses but over the bones," her father said, smiling.

—from “Jungle Planet”
by Lakambini A. Sitoy

Patssi Valdez • The Dream

When they climbed back into the jeep, Sam was in a good mood. He loved his valley and all the layers of it. The time they'd spent together was as meaningful for him as it had been for Eddie and Myrna. Sam wanted to commemorate the occasion and so proposed that they make a song. Eddie would do the music, and Sam would write the lyrics. It would give Eddie a reason to return. More important—as Eddie realized when he heard the old man's verses later—this little pilgrimmage had been Sam's first lesson: to know his music, you must first learn about his valley.

On Eddie's next visit, Sam would show him a song made of twelve short verses, each one naming a stop on their journey or one of the places they'd seen: the lookout point, the stretch of shoreline, the rush of distant water pouring down a canyon wall, the dark sea in front of Paka'alana, the long-gone temple of the royal ones.

"Let the refrain be told," the last verse says, "The mind has seen Waipi'o."

—from “Hawaiian Son”
by James D. Houston
with Eddie Kamae

"I'm Raquel."

"Edmond." We shake hands.

"The brother." She lets go. "Cold."

Icy flakes stick to my fingers. I wipe them on my pants. "You're friends with Eric?"

"Sisters. That's what we call ourselves, anyway." She lights the cigarette, takes a drag, then lets out a long breath of smoke. "I have no family here. They're all back in Manila, pissed at me for leaving. So she became my sister. Sweet, huh?"

Sisters. She. It's like this woman is testing me to see what I know and don't know about my brother.

"Eric always wanted a sister," I say.

"Well, if we're sisters, then that makes you my Kuya Edmond, right?"

"Kuya?" My Tagalog is more rusty than I thought.

"Big brother."

—from “The Brothers”
by Lysley Tenorio

Ester Hernández • Astrid Hadad in San Francisco

Bonner believed in several things, but foremost among them was the principle of confession. He didn't think of it as a sacrament, like the mainline demoninations did, but he had latched on to a verse from the Epistle of James and rode that idea for all it was worth. That verse said that if anyone was sick, he or she should call for an elder, be anointed with oil, and confess his or her sins in as public a manner as possible. Bonner took this to mean that any affliction—physically or emotionally felt—could be cured by the understanding that sin was the root cause of all illness. Those of us at New Aurora were thus big believers in salad oil and the spiritual badgering of anyone with a fever.

—from “Marriage among
the Believers: A Love
Story” by David Borofka

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