Category: Poetry

she knows where the river winds itself around the cliffs, where the snakes polish their lungs in bile, where the darkness multiplies in sleepless schools of fish

On the bottom shelf,  my shadow.  The middle,  a mirror holds my face. 

And a cloud in the shape of a sister. This womb emptied of promise. That brief waking moment love has no synonym.

I scramble for memory of space— hippocampus dialed in and dialed back—receding, swallowing whole boroughs, reducing whole moods to neighborhoods.

Soak figs in wine. Eat—on a white tablecloth—a debt of salt (pickles, olives, smoked fish, and capers).

What poem would I write with those letters? What                                                             (portrait on what wall?) words?

I never forgot. Our home, too, would be riddled with moth dust and carpet beetles, dried pipefish, bones waiting to be articulated and identifiable.

She’s much too young to understand our connection to Hawaii, the heritage we’re tied to by marriage and the bonds of ohana