Photo by Mark Barkaway (Brighton, United Kingdom)
My three-year-old’s been neutered but he still has urges. He gets on top of my plush bear, sinks canines into the soft head, and drags the bear over the mattress bucking his hips. It’s somewhat lewd. It’s been happening daily and I pray he doesn’t do this in front of my girlfriend or parents. Still, I feel bad for him.
I call his lover Honey Bear. She looks like she’s been around the block. Sometimes I watch him dream—eyelids fluttering, whiskers quivering—and imagine he’s rolling on the bed with five fluffy children.
Kirby Wright was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Wright has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a past recipient of the Jodi Stutz Memorial Prize in Poetry, the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Robert Browning Award for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in Poetry and The Novel. BEFORE THE CITY, his first poetry collection, took First Place at the 2003 San Diego Book Awards. Wright is also the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA’I NUI AHINA, both set in Hawaii. He was a Visiting Fellow at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii. He was also a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard Residency in Edgartown, Mass., and the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic. His futuristic novel THE END, MY FRIEND was published in 2013. He published SQUARE DANCING AT THE ASYLUM, a collection of flash fiction, in 2014.
