Editors’ Blog: Community Poetry with Craig Santos Perez Featuring: D. Keali‘i MacKenzie Mike Fraser Tagi Qolouvaki Julia Wieting Bryn Villers T-man Thompson
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A Note on This Blog ENG 713—one more reason to celebrate Craig Santos Perez. In this semester’s “where it’s at” creative writing seminar (Contemporary Pacific Poetry & Poetics), Craig initiated a poetry response project to the recent molasses spill in Honolulu Harbor. Craig’s dynamic mind is matched by his commitment to community poetics and thrilling pedagogy. In this editor’s blog, I am proud to feature works by D. Keali‘i MacKenzie, Mike Fraser, Tagi Qolouvaki, Julia Wieting, Bryn Villers, and T-man Thompson. —No‘u Revilla Hawai‘i Review Poetry Editor
Kanaloa Responds D. Keali‘i MacKenzie
There are more ways to drown than you realize a panicked escape deep, below my surface a slow descent away from the sun in your own vomit blocked by stomach acid - gilled animals drown in air starved for the right combination of oxygen and hydrogen, you’ve seen them flail about. This is something new. sugar cane refuse produced to fatten cattle for the slaughter, to slake the appetite of fast food and ever hungry markets. - To drown, choke from all that molasses what is the cost of an ecosystem? as if these waters weren’t polluted enough by industry, military, tourism, tourists so sweet the green in your pockets how damaged the wet at your feet. What does sea water and thick, molassesed sugar taste like? feel like? here, bring your lips close. sip this mixture, more intoxicating than kava and heavier than the salty blood in your own veins.
David Keali‘i is a queer poet of mixed Kanaka Maoli descent who was born and raised in Nipmuc territory/Western Massachusetts. His work appears in, or is forthcoming from: Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English (Whetu Moana, Volume II), Assaracus: a Journal of Gay Poetry, XCP:Cross Cultural Poetics, and Hawai‘i Pacific Review. He was also a member of the 2009 Worcester Poetry Slam team that competed at the national poetry slam held in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Together Against Disasters Mike Fraser
V1 There is a menace in the ocean That stirs this body into motion The livelihoods of the people are at stake here We must stand as one and protect what we hold dear CH: This is where we be Living of the land and the sea This is when it really matters Come together community against disasters V2: Why is it the people always hurt Corporations, our land they pervert They, are the root to this evil We, must stand as one people CH: This is where we be Living of the land and the sea This is when it really matters Come together community against disasters Br: No longer can we be ignorant to things around us Removing toxicity from our land is a must Injustices rampaging, all through the ‘aina Gather yourselves and set your souls fire CH: This is where we be Living of the land and the sea This is when it really matters Come together community against disasters
Statement: The molasses spill has caused some in the community to suffer. This song responds to a general disinterest in wanting to help these people, let alone care. It also pushes forth the value of standing as a community and using our resources and our talents against injustice. It is my hope that people come together as a big ‘ohana to stand against injustices everywhere. Michael Fraser is an unclassified grad at UH-MÄ noa. He enjoys writing songs and, because of Craig Perez, his direction in song writing is dealing with injustice in the community.
Suka
Tagi Qolouvaki “More than 26,000 fish and other marine species in Honolulu Harbor suffocated and died as the molasses spread and sank to the ocean floor about 5 miles west of Waikiki’s hotels and beaches. The spill happened in an industrial area of Honolulu Harbor west of downtown, where Matson loads molasses and other goods for shipping.” —AP Dua May your fossil fuel bloodlines shrivel in the heat of Maui’s noonday sun May the he‘e that is your warmachine be lured by the cowrie bait of Oceania’s fishermen and women for meat on our children’s tables May your dollarbill idols leap with you to Burotu May you choke on your high-fructose corn syrup molasses and GMOs over breakfast lunch and afternoon teas till you know the pain of Papa May Tangaloa dream you a million deaths And Hinenuitepō refuse you the dark and cool embrace of earth’s children
Rua how do we survive stolen children? gunned down indigenous men? molasses spills that drown our fish? how do we love sugar as it strangles the breath of moana nui? Tolu my bubu lived for sugar every day she ladled four tablespoons into her ceylon tea over her quaker oats and coconut rice sugar made her smile wide and toothless for tea and porridge may be eaten without dentures sugar brought war between the matriarchs of my family my bubu and my mother raging at each other over the dining table as we cut her sugar intake in half then whole in concern for her failing health
sugar made her scheme borrow small containers of crude brown from the neighbors much poorer than we sugar makes my mother and I weep as we continue to miss her and remember how we denied her pleasures but my bubu also loved fish cawaki, nama, yaga . . . i imagine her response to bloated and floating salt-water corpses “Weh . . . sa maumau!� Va i spent my adolescence in a town grown up around sugar walked the hour-less kilometers to school through the dust of cane tall stalks of sweet grass bands upon bands of green, red, gold and green again mapped our boundaries hot days ballooned with the smoke of cane burned down to the soil black and brittle the scent of milled sugar leaked into our dreams on nights cool and cloying school breaks when the heat ripened mangos and flash-dried the wash on the lines my cousins and i sat on doorsteps
sweetness the stem of refrigerated dovu in our hands sweetness the tearing of coarse stalk methodically with our teeth sweetness the mouthfuls chewed dry and spat into the communal pile before us Lima sugar is british colonial rule sugar is native lands stolen by white settlers for plantations sugar is girmityas fed lies who survived the long journey over oceans from native to alien lands and enslavement sugar is the blood of girmityas, itaukei and blackbirding slaves from vanuatu and the solomons to fatten the pockets of settlers and the native elite sugar is sacred dovu made toxic through refinement and poisoning the vanua Ono suka is to return degei dakuwaqa daucina remember your lost children forgive us our sins deliver us suka is to return
What the pōhaku said Julia Wieting
In this decayed canal among the hotels in the bright moonlight, the springs are singing to the hidden graves, about the cloak there is the empty cloak, only the wind knows. It has no bearer, and no name, dry bones can name someone. Only an ‘ō‘ō stood on the banyan tree tooktook tooktook took in a flash of memory. Then a broken pipe bringing death Ala Wai was stinking, and the dusty streets waited for death, while the black cloud bloomed at a distance, inside Ke‘ehi. The ocean choked, gasped in silence. Then spoke the pōhaku GLUG Give: what have we written? My friend, treacle poisoning my heart the awful sticking of a moment’s blunder which an age of prudence can never erase by this, and this only, we have subsisted which is not to be recorded in our bibliographies or in memories shaped by the beneficent schools or under promises spoken by the authors at hand GLUG Sympathize: I have heard the phrase turn in the mouth once and turn once yet we think of the phrase, each in her poem thinking of the phrase, each confirms a poem only at moonrise. Our upper air. Rumors? Revive for a movement a spoken claim. GLUG Control: The boats responded sadly, to the hands expert with rod and hook the sea was too calm, your heart would have responded sadly, when informed, beating disobedient to controlling hands I looked upon this shore, fished, with the drained ahupua‘a behind me shall I, at least, see these lands in order? In every hole the sea came up, till it could come no more Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. He huarahi kua takahia—O shoofly shoofly e ho‘opōhaku, e noho mālie
These fish guts we must shore against our ruin why then, isle, e ke‘ehi lō‘ihi. Matson’s drowned again. Give. Sympathize. Control. Aloha Aloha Aloha kekahi i kekahi _______________________________________ Notes: l. 42: qv. “At the sea shore.” Stevenson, R.L. (1913). A Child’s Garden of Verses. l. 43: I answer without fear of being shamed. Dante, Inferno (XXVII, 61–66; translated by Hollander and Hollander 2000); Eliot uses this as part of the epigraph for “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” l. 44: the trodden pathways; shoofly is synonymous with molasses (see shoofly pie). l. 45: stay, rest quietly. qv. Pukui and Elbert (1986: 334)h. l. 47: march forward. l. 49: love one another uniquely (appropriately). I heard this ‘ōlelo no‘eau from retired lawyer Leigh Wai-Doo, speaking of his mother’s attitude toward his polio.
Statement: This poem adapts the latter half of “V. What the thunder said,” which is the final section of “The Waste Land,” by T. S. Eliot. I have been working to adapt the entire poem over the course of the last three months, ostensibly in response to a class I audited on Hawaiian activism and the law. Through this adaptation, I hope to convey to the reader a sense of concern about and exploration of the development of Waikīkī, which I’ve chosen as a metonym for the legal fights in post-overthrow Hawai‘i generally. Within this final section, I’ve chosen to reference Matson’s molasses spill as both a specifically tragic event and one which could be the catalyst for movement and healing. To do so, I’ve transposed Eliot’s concentration with spiritual desertification onto real desertification, at least within an urban core that is layered over traditional ways of knowing and managing the land, and specifically the watershed. The previous sections of the poem are centered around Waikīkī and especially the Ala Wai canal, which is why the narrative shifts focus in the beginning of this poem thence to Ke‘ehi Lagoon. Selected hints: reference to the ‘ō‘ō should indicate the perils (and echoes) of extinction; reference to Stevenson creates a bridge to the first section of the poem, as well as evoking the birthright of all child, viz., to play unimpeded at the sea shore; reference to Dante is a response to Eliot’s weaving of Dante’s work through the original poem, as well as to situate this journey of knowing and learning within the set of consequences provided within the Divine Comedy; finally, the name “Ke‘ehi,” meaning “to trample or march,” among other meanings, is cognate with the Māori word “takahi(a),” which is a nickname I was given when I danced haka—to march and trample means to immediately disrupt, with or without some future gain. Ideally, the gain will be for the good of the many, rather than the good of the few, or the one. Julia Wieting likes to write poetry, often at the exclusion of other important tasks. Other priorities include her husband, her cat, the Prime Directive, and perusing fantasy books.
Fisheyes Bryn Villers
Fish don’t know why they die— suffocation in or out of water, on the line, in the shallows, eyes distending, at the dock, on the rocks, over flames, draining veins— They probably don’t even recognize when a brother or a sister dies; but we do.
Liner
Bryn Villers Perhaps, if the anchor’s next trip went one way we could all be happy.
Statement: “Fisheyes” was partially inspired by the image of a puffer plastered all over the Internet, eyes swollen and cloudy. It deals with human stewardship and responsibility for nature on an overt level, also human-to-human and animal-to-animal interactions and a few other issues also. “Liner” comes in part from the Matson name. The “t” in Matson is anchor-shaped, and being one of only two major ocean delivery liners for the island, it is in many ways an anchor keeping the islands moored in the metaphorical bay of the commercial consumer industry. It can be taken as both a blessing and a curse, in that we are tied so heavily to other places for our goods (including but not limited to food) and yet we are provided with products that it would impossible to manufacture here (and who would approve of the factories?) because of lack of resources. A limited discussion as there are both deeper and broader issues. Bryn Villers is a first-year student in the M.A. creative writing program at UH-Mānoa. His poetry is often very tangible in form, though implicating much broader and impactful issues than are presented at the surface. Believing that all things are intended to teach and communicate, he intends to raise questions in the reader’s mind about the way they interpret as a reflection on broad worldview and personal perception. He also has a B.S. in Zoology.
Answers from the Ama’ama T-man Thompson
Death spilled in to my hale today, with consequences greater than death The Kumulipo can tell you Not this Kāne, whose feet, calloused from months trapped in Doc Martens rubber, feel ‘āina no more Not that Kāne, whose heart, callous from weeks trapped in Tori Richard cotton, hears ‘āina no more Not this Kāne, whose hands, callously miming for days trapped in Dove-ultra soft, love ‘āina no more Not that Kāne, whose ‘ōpū, hangs over just far enough to block me from his maka Lying On the sidewalk At his feet Dead. Death spilled in to my hale today, as I’m not yet guarded by the pūhala The Kumulipo will tell you Not this Kāne Not that Kāne
Statement: This poem was written in response to the recent molasses spill in Honolulu. As I watched the different news coverage of the spill, read articles, and viewed the many photos being disseminated, it became clear to me that everyone was discussing the spill in terms of the scientific and economic impact it would have. Yet no one talked about the significance of this disaster in terms of Hawaiian culture. My poem is trying to highlight the hollow nature of the discussions being had, which includes the lack of feeling, in all aspects, in the words of those who were “concerned” about the spill. What the significance of the Kumulipo is in this poem is the reader’s responsibility. T-man Thompson is a second-year M.A. studying Pacific Literature. He was born and raised in Lā‘ie, Hawai‘i and received his B.A. from Brigham Young University-Hawai‘i. He is of Hawaiian, Maori, and Samoan descent and writes about South Pacific cultures.
www.hawaiireview.org Hawai‘i Review Staff, 2013-2014 Anjoli Roy, Editor in Chief Kelsey Amos, Managing Editor Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, Design Editor No‘ukahau‘oli Revilla, Poetry Editor David Scrivner, Fiction Editor
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