Craig Santos Perez

 

A Whole Foods in Hawai‘i

I dreamed of you tonight, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake, as I walked down on the sidewalk under plumeria trees with a vog headache looking at the Māhealani moon.

In my need fo’ grindz, and hungry fo’ modernity, I stumbled into the gentrified lights of Whole Foods, dreaming of your manifestos!
    What pineapples and what papayas! Busloads of tourists shopping at night! Bulk aisle full of hippies! Millennials in the kale! Settlers in the Kona coffee! And you, Richard Hamasaki, what were you doing kissing the ripe mangos?

I saw you, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake, broomless, ghostly janitor, sampling the poke in the seafood section and eyeing the smoked fish.
    I heard you ask questions of each: Who butchered the mahimahi? What price opah belly? Are you my ‘aumakua?
    I wandered in and out of the canned goods aisle following you, and followed in my imagination by Sir Spamalot.
    In our bourgeois fancy we strolled through the cooked foods 
section tasting hand-churned cheese, possessing every imported delicacy, and whispering to the cashier, “Go fuck yourself.”

Where are we going, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake? The doors of perception close in an hour. Which way does your pakalōlō point 
tonight?
    (I touch your book and dream of our huaka‘i in Whole Foods and feel dādā.)
    Will we sail all night through Honolulu streets? The coconut trees no have nuts, tarps up for the homeless, we’ll both be lonely.
    Will we cruise witnessing the ruined empire of America, past pink mopeds in driveways, home to our overpriced apartments?
    Ah, dear uncle, Buddhahead, ghostly poetry teacher, what Hawai‘i did you have when TheBus quit turning its wheels and you arrived in Waikīkī and stood watching the canoes disappear on the murky waters of the Ala Wai?

Ai (FlorenceAnthony)

Barquisimeto, Venezuela, October 27, 1561 

Today it rained vengefully and hard 
and my men deserted me. 
My kingdom was as close 
as calling it by name. Peru. 
I braid your hair, daughter, 
as you kneel with your head in my lap. 
I talk softly, stopping to press your face to my chest. 
Vera Cruz. Listen. My heart is speaking. 
I am the fishes, the five loaves. 
The women, the men I killed simply ate me. 
There is no dying, only living in death. 
I was their salvation. 
I am absolved by their hunger. 
El Dorado, the kingdom of gold, 
is only a tapestry I wove from their blood. 
Stand up. My enemies will kill me 
and they won't be merciful with you. 
I unsheathe my dagger. Your mouth opens. 
I can't hear you. I want to. Tell me you love me. 
You cover your mouth with your hands. 
I stab you, then fall beside your body. 
Vera Cruz. See my skin covered with gold dust 
and tongues of flame, 
Transfigured by the pentecost of my own despair. 
I, Aguirre the wanderer, Aguirre the traitor, 
the Gilded Man. 
Does God think that because it rains in torrents 
I am not to go to Peru and destroy the world? 
God. The boot heel an inch above your head is mine. 

God, say your prayers. 

Ai (Florence Anthony)

Riot Act, April 29, 1992

I'm going out and get something. 
I don't know what. 
I don't care. 
Whatever's out there, I'm going to get it. 
Look in those shop windows at boxes 
and boxes of Reeboks and Nikes 
to make me fly through the air 
like Michael Jordan 
like Magic. 
While I'm up there, I see Spike Lee. 
Looks like he's flying too 
straight through the glass 
that separates me 
from the virtual reality 
I watch everyday on TV. 
I know the difference between 
what it is and what it isn't. 
Just because I can't touch it 
doesn't mean it isn't real. 
All I have to do is smash the screen, 
reach in and take what I want. 
Break out of prison. 
South Central homey's newly risen 
from the night of living dead, 
but this time he lives, 
he gets to give the zombies 
a taste of their own medicine. 
Open wide and let me in, 
or else I'll set your world on fire, 
but you pretend that you don't hear. 
You haven't heard the word is coming down 
like the hammer of the gun 
of this black son, locked out of this big house, 
while massa looks out the window and sees only smoke. 
Massa doesn't see anything else, 
not because he can't, 
but because he won't. 
He'd rather hear me talking about mo' money, 
mo' honeys and gold chains 
and see me carrying my favorite things 
from looted stores 
than admit that underneath my Raider's cap, 
the aftermath is staring back 
unblinking through the camera's lens, 
courtesy of CNN, 
my arms loaded with boxes of shoes 
that I will sell at the swap meet 
to make a few cents on the declining dollar. 
And if I destroy myself 
and my neighborhood 
"ain't nobody's business, if I do," 
but the police are knocking hard 
at my door 
and before I can open it, 
they break it down 
and drag me in the yard. 
They take me in to be processed and charged, 
to await trial, 
while Americans forget 
the day the wealth finally trickled down 
to the rest of us.

Theresa Hak Kyung. Cha

“I have the documents. Documents, proof, evidence, photograph, signature. One day you raise your right hand and you are American. They give you an American Pass port. The United States of America. Somewhere someone has taken my identity and replaced it with their photograph. The other one. Their signature their seals. Their own image. And you learn the executive branch the legislative branch and the third. Justice. Judicial branch. It makes the difference The rest is past.” 

excerpt― Dictee

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

 

Excerpt from Dictee

From A Far
What nationality
or what kindred and relation
what blood relation
what blood ties of blood
what ancestry
what race generation
what house clan tribe stock strain
what lineage extraction
what breed sect gender denomination caste
what stray ejection misplaced
Tertium Quid neither one thing nor the other
Tombe des nues de naturalized
what transplant to dispel upon

Vikram Seth

 

from Golden Gate

1.1. 
To make a start more swift and weighty, 
Hail Muse. Dear Reader, once upon 
A time, say, circa 1980, 
There lived a man. His name was John. 
Successful in his field though only 
Twenty-six, respected, lonely, 
One evening as he walked across 
Golden Gate Park, the ill-judged toss 
Of a red frisbee almost brained him. 
He thought, "Who'd gloat? Who would be glad? 
Would anybody? " As it pained him, 
He turned from this dispiriting theme 
To ruminations less extreme. 

1.2. 
He tuned his thoughts to electronic 
Circuitry. This soothed his mind. 
He left irregular (moronic) 
Sentimentality behind. 
He thought of or-gates and of and-gates, 
Of ROMs, of nor-gates, and of nand-gates, 
Of nanoseconds, megabytes, 
And bits and nibbles… but as flights 
Of silhouetted birds move cawing 
Across the pine-serrated sky, 
Dragged from his cove, not knowing why, 
He feels an urgent riptide drawing 
Him far out, where, caught in the kelp 
Of loneliness, he cries for help. 

Yang Li

Spring Days

I live by myself in Beijing’s Tiantongyuan East Section 3
apartment complex on the first floor in a unit with a large lanai
the apartment belongs to my girlfriend, Ms. “Chrysanthemum” Wang
she used to share the place with me, but now
she doesn’t. She moved further into town, just two stops from Xidan
but still comes round on weekends to gripe and clean
until the middle of the night, when she’ll suddenly recall our sex life
Ah, love in the Nuclear Age! Spring days grow long, and the foliage is lush . . .
I admit that at first I liked giving oral sex
but lately I just like getting it: oral sex had its day but now it’s dead and gone
I’ve squirreled it away in far off Tehran
where there’s oil underground, the women veil their faces
and an entire nation is scrambling to build the bomb

Yang Li

 

Poems by Yang Li

YANG LI

STEVE BRADBURY

                                                                    Yang Li’s "Glorious."

Albania

Back in our day there wasn’t anyone who didn’t know Albania
who didn’t know it was the bright light of European Socialism
or that the other bright light was us. Back then
from Beijing to Tirana, we could all sing
A bosom friend afar brings distance near … It wasn’t till much later that
I learned these words were by Wang Bo of the Tang
He died a long time ago and was never in Tirana.
I doubt he’d ever heard of the place, much less that it was very, very small.
A pal of ours named Wei Guo once said to us rather cryptically: all
Albania is just like the little upstart kingdom of Yelang.
I remember, I swear: it was the summer of ’74.
We had just turned 12 and thought what he’d said outrageously reactionary.

Craig Santos Perez

Love in a Time of Climate Change

recycling Pablo Neruda's "Sonnet XVII"

I don't love you as if you were rare earth metals,

conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that cause

war. I love you as one loves the most vulnerable

species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss.

I love you as one loves the last seed saved

within a vault, gestating the heritage of our roots,

and thanks to your body, the taste that ripens

from its fruit still lives sweetly on my tongue.

I love you without knowing how or when this world

will end. I love you organically, without pesticides.

I love you like this because we'll only survive

in the nitrogen rich compost of our embrace,

so close that your emissions of carbon are mine,

so close that your sea rises with my heat.

 

Ocean Vuong

PINTREST

 

Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong

 

Ocean, don’t be afraid.

The end of the road is so far ahead

it is already behind us.

Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

won’t remember its wings

no matter how many times our knees

kiss the pavement. Ocean,

are you listening? The most beautiful part

of your body is wherever

your mother's shadow falls.

Here's the house with childhood

whittled down to a single red trip wire.

Don't worry. Just call it horizon

& you'll never reach it.

Here's today. Jump. I promise it's not

a lifeboat. Here's the man

whose arms are wide enough to gather

your leaving. & here the moment,

just after the lights go out, when you can still see

the faint torch between his legs.

How you use it again & again

to find your own hands.

You asked for a second chance

& are given a mouth to empty out of.

Don't be afraid, the gunfire

is only the sound of people

trying to live a little longer

& failing. Ocean. Ocean —

get up. The most beautiful part of your body

is where it's headed. & remember,

loneliness is still time spent

with the world. Here's

the room with everyone in it.

Your dead friends passing

through you like wind

through a wind chime. Here's a desk

with the gimp leg & a brick

to make it last. Yes, here's a room

so warm & blood-close,

I swear, you will wake —

& mistake these walls

for skin.

Craig Santos Perez

 CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ

One fish, Two fish, Plastics, Dead fish

 

recycling Dr. Seuss

 

Some fish are sold for sashimi,

some are sold to canneries,

and some are caught by hungry slaves

to feed what wealthy tourists crave!

 

Farmed fish, Fish sticks, Frankenfish, Collapse

 

From the Pacific to the Atlantic,

from the Indian to the Arctic,

from here to there,

dead zones are everywhere!

 

Overfishing, Purse seine, Ghost fishing, Bycatch

 

This one has a little radiation.

This one has a little mercury.

0 me! 0 my! What schools

of bloated fish float by!

 

Here are fish that used to spawn, but now the water is too warm

 

Some are predators and some are prey,

Who will survive? I can’t say.

Say! Look at its tumors! One, two, three ...

How many tumors do you see?

 

Two fish, One fish, Filet-o-Fish, No fish

Srikanth Reddy

 

Underworld Lit

 

XIV

Please print clearly and remember your name.

 

1) The river of fire, in ancient Greek thanatopography, feeds into the river of _____________.

 

2) From the river of pain spring two rivers—the river of _____________ and the river of _____________.

 

3) The river of _____________ runs a separate course entirely, concealed inside the Greek word for truth.

 

4) At the sight of sinners approaching, the _____________ seethes “like butter in a frying pan.”

 

5) _____________ is the Sanskrit river of ash.

 

6) As the sun god Ra floats down the river of the hidden chamber, his head is exchanged for that of a _____________.

 

7) Those for whom much lamentation is made find the _____________ swollen with tears and difficult to cross.

 

8) To our knowledge, the river of _____________ has no name.

Hoa Nguyễn

 

Hawk Chased by Black Birds

You seek     the edge of the bed

and I dream where the sick one

needs a shot on the ass    a tricked shot

maybe have to set up the hypo

on the toilet seat for accidental

sitting-on of the cure

 

and you are late for your presentation

in which you discuss disaster aftermath

 

The mother in the dream shows

her new baby with mismatched

sized eyes

and I pretend not to see

 

the “Ghosts of Christmas Past”    fall asleep

and found your mouth in a kiss

 

You can keep the beer

 

Faint face whiskers

Black beans on toast

 

I said    Fuck it    fold socks

 

The extension cord will not

reach the light wrapped

around the pear tree in white