Hawaiʻi Review Number 16: 1984 by Hawaiʻi Review Archive

HI'IAKA AND THE MO'O

Dietrich Varez 1984

FALL 1984

NUMBER 16

Cover by Dietrich Varez

Hawa ii Re view is a student publication of the Board of Publications, University of Hawaii at Manoa. It reflec ts only the views of its editors and writers, who are solely responsible for its content. Subscriptions and manuscripts should be sent to Hawaii Review, University of Hawaii, Department of English, 1733 Donaghho Road, Honolulu, Hl 96822 . Manuscripts should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Hawaii Review is a member of The Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. ÂŠ

1984 by the Board of Public ations, University of Hawaii.

HAWAll REVIEW Fall1984

LIZABETH BALL Editor donna GORDON BAIR Managing Editor ZDENEK KLUZAK Poetry Editor RODNEY MORALES Fiction Editor TIM ARNEY BETH CUTHRELL SUSAN KOMO NANCY MOWER MARGARET RUSSO JEANNIE THOMPSON JILL WIDNER Readers

iii

David P. Penhallow

MOMI AND PERCY

KANIKAU

Anna Derby Howe Blackwell

THREE POEMS

Gary Kissick

TWO POEMS

Eric Chock

INFLAMED

Pat Matsueda

TWO POEMS

Juliet S. Kono

YOUNG HANDS, YOUNG FACE

Kenneth Zamora Damacion

MOVING OUT FOR THE LAST TIME

Jim Daniels

MEIJIRO IN A GUAVA GROVE

Fred 0 . Baysa

LINES

Elisa Mu i

KOETSU: MOON AND RABBIT

Phyllis Thompson

TWO POEMS

Gene Frumkin

FIXING RANDOM

Holly Yamada

TWO POEMS

Mitchell LesCarbeau

IN THE VALLEY OF THE TEMPLES

Loretta Petrie

LETTER FROM KAUAI

Reuben Tam

TWO POEMS

Bill Danks

NIGHTMARE

Joseph P. Salaz

THE LION FARM

Leonard Nathan

THE MARINER'S PRINCESS

Geoline Abraham

VANISHING POINT

Esther Yoon

UNTITLED

Keolani Taitano

A WANDERER

Jaroslav Liska

SUNSET BEACH AT NIGHT

Thomas M. Cashman

BEFORE THE STORM IN PROGRESSO

Roland Tharp

WONDER WHEEL

Arthur G. Kimball

PEREGRINE FALCON

Peter Gorham

BOB THE ALIEN

Scott Roeben

TWO POEMS

Robert Wexelblatt

FIRST DAYS IN EXILE, 1984

Houston Wood

THREE POEMS

Norman Hindley

TAKING ADVICE

Ben Adres

ALOHA SHIRT

Michael McPherson

TWO POEMS

Dean H. Honma

CUTTHROAT: APLAYER WHO PLAYS FOR HIMSELF

Sherri Szeman

from PROUD MONSTER: SKETCHES

lan MacMillan

MAUl THE DEMIGOD review

104

Reinhard Friederich

HO' IHO'I HOU: A TRIBUTE TO GEORGE HELM AND KIMO MITCHELL review

109

Craig Howes

CONTRIBUTORS

David P. Penhallow MOMI AND PERCY

When I was fourteen I spent a weekend with Aunt Momi. I was boarding in a private school in Honolulu. The year was 1948. Weekends away were precious, and we could leave the confines of the dorm only if we stayed with a relative. Momi was my real aunt, not a calabash "auntie," a term which is used in Hawaii with affectionate abandon for any woman you were fond of as a child . Momi was my very real aunt. My parents had had to give the dorm master a list of relatives it would be acceptable for me to stay with while in Honolulu. Momi's name was on the list, at the bottom. Bradford Hall was named after a missionary family. There seemed to be a competition on campus for which missionary family could lay claim to the most school buildings. The Bradfords had only Bradford Hall to their credit. They were known for their modesty. Today all that is obscured because of the many ethnic groups that now attend the school, so that a Takahashi can now enter the competition with a missionary family for the honors. Well, Bradford Hall was my home for ten months out of the year and for six years of my adolescent life. The building was made of cement, and in 1948, my freshman year, the cement walls of my room were papered from floor to ceiling with pictures of movie stars- mostly colored photos ripped from movie magazines, with jennifer Jones very prominent and showing lots of bosom. I was awed by her earthy transformation on the screen since the time she played her Academy Award winning role as St. Bernadette. My hobby for collecting these photographs began because I was a movie fan. I liked to be s urrounded by my "friends," and I wanted to be a movie star. I wrote poems about my stardom. I dreamed about it and ever since I was dragged by my Mother to the Varsity Theatre to see Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I was hooked. The film frightened the hell out of me and I hid under the seat during all the scary parts. The terror and excitement of the hunchback roaming the streets of Paris so impressed me that I wanted to be part of that aliveness I saw on the screen. I felt that my own life was humdrum or at best unsatisfactory. It was unsatisfactory because I had two things against me. One, I was fat. I mean fat, not pleasingly plump as many of my relatives would remark kindly. I never thought their remarks particularly kind, because I knew

from the expression in their eyes what they really thought as they scanned my corpulent body. I was fat, veering to the obese. The other thing against me was my name, Percy. I hated the name Percy, but looking back, though, what better name for a kid who was fat, who loved movies, and who never exercised? It was perfect. I knew it was perfect, and therefore I hated the name even more. Percy. One thing I liked about Momi was that she accepted the fat, and my fantasies, and she indulged me in all my bad habits. I'll come back to Momi shortly, but before I do I would like to tell you why we dorm inmates looked forward to our weekend escape from the confines of Bradford Hall. The dorm was dank and was run by a couple we nicknamed the Lizard Lady and the Ox. Need I say more? They had a dog named Putz who was a cross between a poodle and a fence hopper. I believe the creature that climbed over the fence was a dachshund and had made Putz look like a long sausage held up by four delicate chicken legs decorated with paper panties. As soon as the Lizard Lady and the Ox would leave for an engagement, we would run into their apartment and scare poor old Putz, who would then piddle on the couch, the rug, or whatever place he was standing when we gave our rousing loud shriek. On returning, the dormmasters would find Putz's puddles on the couch , the rug, and on their shoes the moment they entered their apartment. The Ox was sure that poor old Putz had a bladder infection. To add to the couple's problems, the denizens of Bradford Hall rolled shotput bals down the cement corridors, which smashed into their door at midnight, sounding as if Pearl Harbor was being attacked again . Another popular prank was to put a loudspeaker on the hill next to their suite and play a Japanese hit tune of the day at top volume at three in the morning. Our dorm masters lacked sleep, and life for them was a bit on the traumatic side. They left the next year. There wasn't an atmosphere of great familial nurturing at Bradford Hall. My roommates were from Maui and Hawaii. Manny was a jew, the first I had ever met, and I couldn't find anything that made him different from anyone else, even if Gregory Peck in Gentlemen 's Agreement had his special problems. Manny was pleasant and a bit sad. He was also plump, which endeared him to me; we had something in common. His melancholy got ill the way of our friendship, or perhaps I needed to have glorious all the time. Sadness was too real for me. Will, my other roommate, was buddy. He would forage with me in secondhand bookstores on River looking for old issues of Photoplay, so we could tear out glossy pictures luscious babes with red ruby lips. I was always a bit angry with him because he had more pictures of}ennifer Jones than I. Will was from which he defended as the Hawaiians did lao Needle. I was from Kauai knew better. Will was smart, played tennis well, and I could talk him in seeing a picture at the Waikiki Theatre on a Saturday afternoon. It wat seventh heaven to hit a Saturday matinee, feel and smell the cool air of the

Waikiki as the artificial clouds drifted on the doomed blue velvet ceiling. We would watch the lights change on the electric rainbow and anticipate the adventure that was about to unravel. Sinking back into the plush theatre seats, we would devour three Hershey bars with almonds, two Milky Ways, then split a Babe Ruth. Seventh heaven. But I often suspected that Will would rather be at the Outrigger Club soaking in the sun. I wasn't a member, I really didn't care, but it made me aware I was poor, not rich. Well, not really poor- we were just not affluent- and as long as I could see a movie, and eat Hershey bars, who cared . My other dormmates ranged from the sinister, dark types who roamed the halls at night to attack some victim with a crayfish from the lily pond, to the flamboyant types who made Arabian Nights' tents out of their bunk beds or the jocks who went to bed at eight because they were worn out from football practice or their one hundred sit-ups (a feat which always impressed me as impossible). It was also that age when seething sexual energy was at its peak. You could smell it in the atmosphere. I think the Ox could also sense it, so he brought in a doctor to "talk to the boys." My roommates and I were not included because we were too young. Even though I was so fat I could barely see below my double chins and knew very little of what went on below my navel, I was still curious. I remember the boys coming back from this meeting looking as if the stuffing had been scared out of them. I'm sure they were told that masturbation would lead to insanity. But I noticed that their spirits picked up in a few weeks when they observed that their sanity hadn't dimmed or that the known sexual jocks hadn't been shipped to the looney bin in Kaneohe. I did overhear new variations for release: one was with a Crisco can with a hole in it and all I could imagine was blood poisoning or a shortened member. Again my judgment was flawed by my large rolls of fat, and I could only keep trying and trying to remember what happened below my navel. It became quite tiring to me to even remember what toes looked like, sol immediately put all those extraneous thoughts out of mind and concentrated on food, movie stars, and getting out weekends, in that order. Now back to Momi. I never called her Aunt Momi; she wasn 't the type. She was Momi. She called the dorm in her husky Jean Arthur-Barbara Stanwyck voice and asked the Ox's permission for me to visit her on the coming weekend. Ox affirmed the request and was probably damn glad to get me out of the dorm and have a weekend of relative peace. This is what I thought , but in reality he thought I was affable, plain, fat, fat Percy. I'm sure he never imagined I could get through my rolls of fat and charm to do anything other than lift a fork. Did I say charm? Yes, for I could smile- my lips parted, my cheeks swelled, and my protruding teeth glistened, forming a charming smile indeed. I earned the reputation of having a pleasing personality. What else could they say? They had to say something.

Whenever I hear someone say that so-and-so has a pleasing ""'""n'"ii'''tv\ cringe. Well, Momi called and Saturday arrived, I signed myself ouf;and I went on my weekend of adventure. It was always an adventure Momi. Momi was an alcoholic, so my relatives said. I noticed she liked her but so did many of the other adults I observed. I think what made Momi alcoholic in their eyes was that she was an embarrassment, a failui-e. had failed two marriages and had no money. The world does not people, especially women, who are divorced and have no money. embarrassed her family and her friends, but everyone loved Momi, so said. How could you not love her? She had a sense of humor and a laugh that started in her toes. She was an original. Momi was aPI11Pnl. . even in her poverty. We had struck up a friendship perhaps because were both outcasts, I for my fat and she for her failure to measure society. But she was loved, so they said. I would always hear, "Poor what can we do about her but I just love her to death?" I truly believe people were mostly embarrassed about their r eaction to her; they want to be associated with a failure, and frankly she could wet the seat your favorite chair on her fifth martini. I arrived at Momi's apartment at noon. She lived in a closed-off of a private home in lower Manoa. It was owned by an Irish family Momi said were on their uppers. I could never tell, because there always easy laughter and loud bantering from the other side of the wall Momi's apartment. The O'Neils were a good natured and lively people, as found most of the Irish. Momi's apartment had a screened-in sun combination bedroom and living room, and a tiny kitchen. The a smelled of stale cigarettes and bourbon with a touch of lilac perfume. Momi was there at the front door when I arrived. She looked like Sheridan right out of a Jimmy Cagney film . She wore a dress. (I never Momi in slacks; I can only remember her in a dress .) Her hair was aubu piled high on top her head , streaks of grey as a reminder of middle age. looked real good to me. My mother, without envy, always said Momi had She was the best looking of all her sis ters, a real Clara Bow, with a figure and bee stung lips. In her best throaty voice s he said , "Come on kid. " That's another thing I loved about her: s he never called me Percy; was kid or come on s port. I entered through the ripped screen door and squeezed into the ti kitchen in time for lunch . On the counter were five slices of cheese, two slices of white bread, a half pound of butter, and herr frying pan. I was ready for her s pecial gourmet concoction . I had barely "hi" when the stove was lit'and into the frying pan went the half pound butter, then the bread to soak up the yellow goodness and the cheese follow. Through the smoke of my cooking lunch , we made a few ""'"r11nr1rnn

exchanges, but Momi knew I was never very good at conversation until my opu was filled . She made the usual aunt comments- " How was school?" ("Boring") " How was the dorm?" ("Boring") and "How was I?" (" Fat! ") By the time she was through with her usual auntie ministrations, we got down to the business at hand. Food. What is better than a hot grilled cheese sandwich, the cheese oozing out the other side of the bread as you take your firs t bite? That was Momi; she knew what went straight to my heart. Next on the agenda was gossip: who in the family was doing what, to whom, for whom , and by whom. Momi always threatened to write her autobiography (relatives shuddered). Then we debated about what to do on "our" day. She took a long drag from her cigarette and told me that s he had a jeep at her disposal. I still don't know where it came from but it was there for anything we wanted to do. I suggested the one-fifteen matinee at the Waikiki Theatre- a joan Crawford film . You could see Momi's lips purse at the mention of that na me. She obviously was n 't a fan; in fact, s he detested the ankle-strapped actress. I tried to point out the similarities between them. She wasn't amused. Thinking that I was losing my case for the matinee, I said that Kent Smith was in it. "Who the hell is Kent Smith?" I knew then that I really had lost my case. I explained he was the guy that always got killed or divorced or had something awful happen to him, so you knew it had to be a good movie. Kent Smith. Why did I pick him? I think Momi noticed some of the cheese that had landed on my s hirt running down the ridge of my belly and cascading like a waterfall down to the cuff of my pants. Maybe. Usually stray food that missed my mouth more than likely hit the floor , as it was in a more direct line from my belly. Those luminous mois t brown eyes understood in a second , and a matinee a nd j oan Crawford was the order of the day. She took a scarf of bright blue from her dresser drawer, wrapped it around her tousled auburn hair, scooped me up, a nd we s trode outside to meet Daisy. Da isy was a Second World War jeep that looked as if it had seen action from Guadalcanal to Iwojima. What was left of the top was mostly found in the back seat, if you could call it a back seat. There were bits and pieces of a jack, empty beer cans, a squirt bottle of oil- no, you could hardly call it a back seat, more of a storage area. With a wave of her ha nd , Momi motioned me into t he jeep. She hiked up her s kirt and took command behind the wheel. She attacked the clutch with her long slim legs under her flower printed dress like Ginger Roger s dancing in Flying Down to Rio. A key came out of her purse- ignition- engine roared- no muffler - and with a few jerks and lurches we headed up Ma noa Valley. I reminded Momi that the movie was in Waikiki , which was in the opposite direction. Her response was "Come on , kid , let's explore a few of my old ha unts." With her spiked heeled shoes, s he pressed down on the accelerator a nd we gunned up the valley. We found the house she was born in , a white, two-story frame hou se

built in the nineteenth cent ury. It had passed t hroug h many hands s he and her s isters had lived there. It was on the side of a hill and still very cared for, especiall y the white s tairs leading up to a large oak door. I imagi ned Momi in a w hite ruffled dress, her Mary Pickford curls large white bow at the back of her head, running down the steps one of her beaus. Momi had had more beaus than she knew what to do so s he told me. She liked men a nd men liked her. She w as a man's worn - s he knew it and they knew it. There were tales of dances on the garden of the Alexander Young Hotel , women adorned in peacock and men in white linen. More tales of dates and of the t imes she took sen to hide the booze and cigarettes when she came home from a party to teetotaling relatives. Her mother had died young, and Momi and her s were farmed out to various relatives as one would pass out cards in a of chance. Her life was just as chancy. Conver sa tion about her was s kirted because I think they s till hurt. That was the failure syntll•nTTu• This all sounds like serious talk . It wasn't presented that way. Just tales had heard again a nd again in her breezy manner but never t ired of they seemed so romantic. Th e little flapper against the world under tropical moon . We headed down the valley, passing a park which is close to University of Hawaii, and getting closer t o the Waikiki Theatre. I looking at her wa tch because I didn 't want to miss t he Pete Smith specia which always came on first. I could skip the cartoons, but I loved the beca use it came jus t before the feature and you had those two large len coming out at you a nd knew the previews were next- t hen j oan Cra and if you liked, Kent Smith. We passed t he park ... a nd sputter, s putter, from the engine. We cold. Out of gas. OUT OF GAS. There goes t he Pete Smith s pecialty. rolled-to a s top next to the curb, which was next to t he park, which was to the bus s top. "Okay kid , PUSH." Push? Me, fat me, who never exercised, onl y a fork? I fleetingly thought maybe I'd ask Momi to push, but looking at s pindly hig h heels, I thought better of it. Pu sh. I though t, there goes news and t he previews and maybe even Ken t Sm ith . Worse yet, there was hill in front of us. Then came a voice. "May I help?" Well, he looked like Dana from Best Years of Our Lives, a leftover Second World War veteran trying find himself. I noticed he wasn ' t addressing me, me w ith sweat beginning encircle my double chins a nd head for a bumpy ride off my stomach. He look ing a t Momi's mois t brown eyes. Hi s were bloodshot a nd he s melled Wa lker's T en Hig h. Mom i said , " Help the kid. " So old Dana Andrews Oliver Hardy started to push the jeep up the hill towards the Un · Actuall y, he pu shed . I wadd led, trying to keep up wh ile Momi was wavi

her hand cheering u s on: "Come on boys, only a little more and we'll make the hill ... and t hen coast to Beretania and a service station ." We made it. Without a word, he hopped in the seat next to Momi . I looked at them both, looking at each other. Damn, there goes the feature ; I knew it. I still hoped for the three o'clock matinee. I stood there looking at them . "Hop in," said our new companion without looking at me. Hop in? Look at me. I stood there. "HOP IN." (Still eyeing Momi - he was down to her ankle.) Hop in meant the back seat, w hich was not a back seat at all, and it meant sitting on top one end of the jack and the other end of a tire iron. "H 0 P IN ." I still stood there. He finally turned and looked at me. He got the message and climbed out. He asked my name. I said Percy. He really got the message then. I lifted myself in with a great heaving, praying to God I wouldn 't break wind because of the immediate exercise and the greasy cheese sandwich which was taking its effect. I tried to tighten up, especially as I had to place my rear end next to Momi's face. "Oh God, oh God ... please .. . please." I made it. Plunk in the hole in the back and then wooooooooosh. The s ilence was deafening; at least it was to me. Momi , a lways quick w ith a response, asked our new arrival his name as the jeep coas ted down the hill. "Tom" , he grunted . Tom, Tom. I could only think of Tom Neal, a B路movie actor. I wasn't impressed. The jeep rolled, with the wind whistling past me, to the bottom of the hill - Beretania Street. As we journeyed down I kept looking at Tom , who was still looking at Momi, who was keeping her eye on the road to avoid any s tray cat, dog, or pedestrian who might inadvertently cross the street while we were making our s ilent journey to some lone outpost of a gas station. I kept thinking, how am I going to get rid of this creep? I'm sure the creep was thinking, how am I going to get rid of this kid? We made it to the bottom of t he hill, and now the trick was to get the jeep to the nearest service stat ion . That meant more pushing, so Tom and I got out. I noticed Momi a nd Tom gave me a wide berth this time a s I exited. We started pushing towards downtown. It was hot, really hot, a nd I was hungry again. I had flas hes of tuna sandwiches and chocolate shakes. The sweat was coming down like Akaka Falls. I knew before long I'd be a giant pool of butter. I looked at Tom, now grunting too. I really could smell the bourbon oozing out of his pores, which hastened my resolve to reach our des tination as fast a s we could push . Momi kept waving us on and yelling encouragement. At last we reached a Shell station. Thank God it was open. It was right across from Dairyman's, where they ser ved a mean tuna sand w ich and a thick, thick cold chocolate shake. Kitty corner from it was the Palace Theatre. John Wayne and Ann Dvorak's names blazed across the marquee. The Palace played only Republic pictures, which I thought were two notches down from Warners, Fox, of the MGM offering at the Waikiki, but I was desperate and a Republic picture- or any picture - would do. Momi, looking as fresh as Ann Sheridan in Stella,

signaled a station attendant to come over and help give us an extra push up the rise into the station and gas pump. While the attendant pumped gas, Momi looked me over. She saw that my stubby fat fingers were black with jeep grease and that my Mcinerny rayon aloha shirt with green leaves was also spotted and sweat stained. Tom didn't look much better. We looked as if we had been in a Sahara film adventure. Momi looked as if she were ready for one. The gas tank was filled, which meant payment. Momi dug through her black patent purse and found she had only enough money for two tickets to the Waikiki. Tom gallantly forked out the money for the gas. I knew then we committed to having this Second World War veteran along. Now my really sank. I hoped Momi would look over at Dairyman's and the Theatre and would come up with my idea for the rest of the afternoon. I almost certain that Warner Brothers, Kent Smith and joan Crawford ......- .â&#x20AC;˘n scrapped. Momi looked me over again and said, "Kid, you're a mess. to Cissy's and clean you up and then we'll go to the movies." I knew that meant ... it meant party time. Cissy was an old friend who lived on water beneath Diamond Head. I saw, instead of tuna sandwiches, tall drinks of bourbon, laughter, and no movies. Tom got the idea quickly we piled into the jeep again and headed for Waikiki. We drove Kalakaua, passing the theatre. I could see the fountains at the entrance fantasized about sitting in the cool, darkened theatre with the art coconuts and banana trees etched against the two walls. Damn. Cissy and Dick were a handsome, part-Hawaiian couple. As I said, lived under the shadow of Diamond Head in a two-story house that next to the ocean and filled with Hawaiian antiquities. They were like home, comfortable and friendly. Cissy and Dick were part of the community, but mostly they just watched Honolulu's passing parade. was only in the confines of their home, when they were surrounded by close friends and family, that I ever saw them lower their guard. They always kind to me; partly because I was a relative of Momi's but suspected, because I was fat and liked to eat. With Momi there was a kinship. Momi, Dick and Cissy never judged one another; they just each other's presence. Momi parked our jeep under a large plumeria tree. She knocked on door. We could hear music and a burst of laughter from inside the Cissy came to the door. She was a beauty. She looked six feet tall, and black hair was worn like Momi's - piled high up on her head , the white streaks defying age. She, like Momi, never wore slacks or a muu She always wore a dress, usually black and lacy, and heels. She was aq in my eyes. Cissy's eyes softened when she saw Momi, and a smile broke out, then she enveloped Momi in her arms. While she embraced her, C

notic.eq the jeep and its occupants, and surmised the situation very quickly. She hele'd us over and u shered us into the house. Tom and I were sent to the bathroom to clean up and told to join them later in the living room. Even after washing off the grease I still felt messy. No matter how neat I tried to make myself, I looked rumpled. But I did the best I could and soon joined them in the living room. Cissy's family had gathered for an impromptu get together. There was Uncle Pete, Auntie Helen, and others whose names I didn't get. I always had trouble remembering names. I guess it was because I was so self·conscious about the poor impression I was making. I would look to see what everyone's eyes told me (Dear me, what a fat little kid), my mind always in a jumble. Cissy rescued me and took me into the kitchen. On the stove were large pots of stew and rice. While I lifted the cover of the boiling stew pot, she opened the ice box door and brought out a large bowl of poi covered with wax ~per. Under the wax paper I could see ice cubes lying on the grey, sticky substance to keep it cool and fresh. Momi heaped my plate with rice and stew like a miniature volcano, then placed a large bowl of poi on the kitchen table. As I started to spoon my stew, she left me alone, contented. From the next room I could hear the muffled sounds of laughter and the tinkling of ice in glasses as I ate my volcano. The smell of the ocean right outside the kitchen , mixed with the odor of seaweed, soothed and nurtured a disappointed soul. The taste of the food, the smell of the sea, the sound of the waves lapping rhythmically against the stone wall of the house hypnotized me into a daydream world of film and fantasies. For hours I often cou ld, and did, enter into a film world all my own, where I controlled the destinies and fortunes of myself and my imagined characters. Much later I broke from my reverie and looked at the scoured plate in front of me. I must have eaten but I couldn't remember. I listened for noises from the living room. All was still. I got up and went to the door and looked into the room: it was filled with cigarette smoke and was dark except for a light from a standing lamp s hining weakly under a pastel s hade. They were a ll still there but quiet, exc~pt for Uncle Pete, who in a muted voice was telling tales long ago. Their eyes were sad and they were s taring into their dtinks. I •~IOOI{ea at Momi . She was blinking to keep back the tears, her eyes hooded and old. Uncle Pete's voice became softer and softer , drifting into a whispered drone. Then silence. The reverie was broken by Cissy picking up a ukulele and s trumming. In the darkness she sang of Hanalei in a sweet clear voice. Then, one by one, the others joined in tentatively, then with gusto. Helen got up and did a hula. I watched how they treated Momi as one of their own. There was an ease in the way they called her name. "Momi, come, come, come we have one more enu (drink)." Perhaps having a Hawaiian name endeared her to them; I don 't know. Perhaps they saw her fluttery hands when s he was nervous or

saw the wounded, hooded eyes when a past hurt was exposed. Perhaps sensed her shyness, her vulnerability. I suspected they knew wounded souls and gave her their aloha generously. That must have because Momi couldn't do the hula or sing and yet she was such a part them. Tom had passed out and there was a streak of wet on his pants. even accepted him. The rhythm of the evening had returned. Tears laughter, as they gently teased one another, had replaced the 路 moments. Cissy sang out: Up the lazy river by an old mill stream that lazy, lazy river in the noon day sun .. .linger in the shade of an old oak tree and throw away your troubles and dream of me ... The song rose like the smoke from their cigarettes and took their and hopes ... circling, circling, round and round, then drifting up fading slowly away into the brown crevasses of Diamond Head loomed above them. Momi caught my eye. She came over and said, "Kid, time to go. about that movie. Next time, okay?" I nodded okay. We left Tom back in Waikiki. Momi drove the jeep through Honolulu Carol Landis in Four girls in a Jeep. It was dark now and we drove River Street. Sailors, street walkers and local characters strolled under yellow-green lights. They looked as if -they were in slow motion as wandered up and down the street, neither touching nor looking at another. Momi and I didn't speak, each lost in our own private thcmJZhtli we headed back up to Manoa. Sunday, back in the dorm, I heard from Will in great detail all about Joan Crawford movie, which made me really angry because I never like told the plot of a movie before I see it. It was ruined for me. I went to my upper bunk muttering I'd get even with him. As I turned over and at the tattered color photo of]ennifer Jones as the vixen in Duel in the tried to remember her as St. Bernadette. What had happened? All my had always expected something that never turned out the way I 路 I saw Momi, Cissy and Uncle Pele in that darkened room singing ... Up the lazy river by an old mill stream ... Throw away your troubles and dream of me ... I saw Momi's sad, dusky eyes in the heavy browed eyes of Pearl C Jennifer Jones' character in Duel in the Sun. They stared back at me. I my eyes. I wanted to sleep, dream my dreams, safe in my world

everything was all right. I squinted, peered again at Jennifer Jones and thought: you know, I was with my own movie stars this weekend. Momi 's better than any old Joan Crawford. I saw her name written on a marquee. MOMI. MOMI. I closed my eyes to dream .. . dream .. . dream . . .

ÂŠ

David P. Penhal/ow

Anna Derby Howe Blackwell

KANIKAU

Officially, the Princess was in mourning. Word had come the week before from the Coast that the Prince had succumbed. His body was on a steamer headed to Hawai'i, and would arrive tomorrow morning. Matters of form would be observed: the little japanese woman in the neat house off upper Fort Street had run up three new gowns in differing weights of black fabric suitable for morning, midday, and evening. Black hats - one with a veil - black gloves, black shoes and stockings, and black-bordered handkerchiefs had been supplied by B.F. Ehlers. The delegation from the church had just left. Christian propriety and decorum would prevail at the Prince's obsequies; but the self-appointed major-domo had remained to commiserate and to suggest various royal and indigenous subtleties to enhance the rites: how many and what kind of kahilis would stand around the bier and be borne in the procession; which funerary and civic societies should have pride of place among the marchers; whether the torches should remain lit in the daylight as well as at night, in the Kalakaua tradition; and niggling over niceties of genealogy while bemoaning his own past glories as a descendant of a liaison between a high chieftess and one of the early explorers over a century ago. And all of this in what he hoped was ali'i Hawaiian rather than the familiar speech of the maka'ainana. God, what a bore Keaka could be! the Princess sighed. The stream of callers had diminished; the presence of the delegation from Kawaiaha'o had kept some of them at bay, driving others away altogether - to return later, she supposed. But nothing daunted Kimo: always the showman, he had remained throughout the delegation's visit, supporting Keaka's suggestions as to protocol and deftly curtailing the inevitable windy dissertations on genealogy. As the shadows lengthened on the lawn, the three sat in peacock chairs on the side lanai. Huge hanging baskets of laua 'e fern shaded them from the setting sun. A lazy sprinkler on the grass made a hypnotic pattern of rainbows in its falling drops. The scent of roses, damp earth, and fern overrode the odor of the monkeypod beans piled behind the largest tree. Hawaiian style路 mourning, to be sure; the Princess bowed to the inevitability of it. On her mother's side, her line was every bit as noble as

Keaka's. Look at him, sitting there, his vast 'opu covering his thighs almost to the knees. He'd gotten so momona, he and his haole wife both, that walking was difficult for them. Oh, well, it was a dignified pace they set on their ponderous progress through a crowded room together; but the cane he was now forced to use gave the lie to dignity being the only reason. Kimo, on the other hand, was short and roly-poly, almost a court jester in conformation as well as personality. Funny to think that he was pure haole and that his grandpa had been the most important person in the Kingdom fifty or sixty years ago. His mother had been the godchild of the kuhina nui. He himself had travelled the world: painting the portraits of heads of state and society notables and enjoying life in general. He had brought his family- the two keiki born in Paris, no ho'i!- back to Hawai'i a year or so ago to be near his mother, who wasn' t too well, and to take up his position in Honolulu society from his house on the beach at WaiklkT. With the Hawaiian proprieties planned for and still to be faced, and with the first shock of fresh grief withstood, the Princess recalled her Scottish father. At this stage of the proceedings , a real Gaelic wake was called for. Ah Hoy, the houseboy, had just brought out a second jug of whiskey to replace the one drained by the three of them since the churchly party had left. "Water of Iron , indeed," the Princess snorted. "This is the real stuff for now." '"Ae, 'a 'oia," said Keaka, swirling a sausage-like finger in his glass and then sucking it. His attempt to hide a belch was not altogether successful. "Our people, from both isles- the British and the Hawaiian- know how to give our dead a proper send-off. Keening in Scotland; wailing in Hawai'i: aue路e路e-e-e! Aue-e-e-e-e!! AUE-E-E-E-E-E!!!" "Oh, stuff it, Keaka, you sound like a poi dog in heat!" said Kimo. Obviously the lady had relaxed enough to tolerate his coarse language. Keaka drew himself up. "Our ali'i has passed," he intoned. "I am doing my poor best to give him suitable honor. I have thought long and hard about the proper rites, and have made my humble suggestions. It remains only to compose a kanikau: a mourning chant for the dead , recalling his deeds and his achievements for his people." "Keaka, you have done wonders ," the Princess soothed. " I know that His Royal Highness had a real affection for you, and now I can see why." "Oh, God, those old mourning chants," Kimo exclaimed. "I remember them in the newspapers- column after column- when I was a boy. I had to read them for Hawaiian lessons. Every stick and stone that the bereaved had seen with the beloved: but the descriptions of the places are marvelous! If I were a landscape painter, I could use them instead of photographs- and I have been known to 'aihue a bit of background here and there!" Keaka was still huffy. "Our people have honored their dead in this manner for centuries," he pontificated. "Princess, do you remember the

mele of Kahahana?" "Of course I do, but my husband wasn't murdered," the Princess replied. "I'm convinced he just overdid himself in San Francisco. There'll be weeping and wailing on the Barbary Coast, I'm sure." "Well, I hear a lot of that mele at home, and I'm not even dead yet," Keaka said. "How come?" Kimo queried. Keaka drew himself up. "There's life in the old boy yet in spite of what Edna Beatrice tells about the evils of ardent spirits!" and he refreshed his glass. "No, I mean how come you hear themele? Wasn't it the one that his wrote when Kahekili finally did away with him?" "Oh, you know how she is," Keaka responded, "always hobno with the old women and chanters who knew her Mumma. I've even had try to get a version of the Kuali'i chant that old Fornander had in his book. The High Chiefess wants one that puts it on O'ahu instead of Kau'ai Hawai'i. But the places, the winds, the rains, the birds and plants are definite." "Didn't he get to Mexico, too?" asked Kimo. "That's what Fornander says," Keaka replied. "Of course, old wife was a Moloka'i chiefess, so everything's slanted toward the line." "Nothing about L1hu'e, enh?" the Princess interjected. "How does it the one Lolale wrote when Kelea left him?" "Aloha ko'u boa i ka puali I ka wai o Pohakea He luna o Kanehoa," Keaka intoned. "He Lae ino o Maunauna 0 Lihu'e, ke hele ia Honi aku ike ala o ka Mau'u," continued the Princess. "I like the new one better," said Kimo, who felt that the occasion becoming lugubrious. "0 Kalenakai, Hale'au'au, A o L'ihu'e ... " "So sweet," the Princess. interrupted, "the way the chief named house on Kau'ai for the place where he grew up on O'ahu. And now it's county seat, no ho'i!" Keaka appeared to have fallen asleep; his head jerked upward suddenly "Ah, the places, beloved of our people and our baku mele ... "he began. "Waha!" the Princess roared and lurched to her feet. "Kimo, go get car. I'm going to compose a mele, a kanikau for my Kawika ... " Kimo left the lanai and made his way through the drawing dodging claw-legged chairs and tables covered with bibelots. Between huge koa cabinets ~hose glass doors protected spears, kahilis, and an路 or two on poles, he found the door to the pantry. "Ah Hoy! Make us some corned beef sandwiches with plenty mustard,

he directed. "You got enny stew? No? Well, maybe some poi? And does the car get plenny gasoline? Missy like go holoholo." "Ah, mo'betta you take okolehao, whiskey, lemminade." Ah Hoy, sensing a rare evening off, was getting into the spirit of things. "You go crank cah; I fix you basket." Soon the auto- a year-old Packard, painted black, with shining brass sidelamps and a leather top gleaming with Ah Hoy's elbow grease- drew up next to the front door. The Princess and Keaka, glasses in hand, made their stately way around the corner from the side lanai and down the front steps as Kimo, beaming, held the front and back doors open. Ah Hoy and his helper piled burlap-covered stone jugs of tea, whiskey, oke, and water behind the driver's seat and lashed picnic hampers to the running board. Keaka excused himself at the last minute to retire behind a shrub on the lawn; Kimo had already taken care of that detail, and the Princess was above such considerations. Clouds gathered above them and the wind blew hardily as they puttputted up the road toward Nu'uanu Pali. Past Hanaiakamalama, with its dreams of past glories and the relics of the little Prince of Hawai'i; past Luakaha, where the Cookes and Athertons sat at table. " Keaka , find me a sandwich," said Kimo at the wheel. "Give me one too," the Princess commanded. "Lucky you told Ah Hoy corned beef and not pork. We wouldn't want the car to get stopped now, when we've so far to go." Kimo negotiated the sharp turn from the lee of the Pali gap to the road where the wind blew; the leather top of the auto billowed in the gusts. As he steered in and out of the gullies, the wind carried the clouds up and away from them . Far below , clusters of lights began to appear along the shore as the twilight deepened. Torches in Kane'ohe Bay showed that fishermen were at work. "Princess, please hold the stick forward , toward the dash board," Kimo instructed. "This buggy keeps trying to come out of second gear." They rounded the hairpin turn and headed toward the road-keeper's house at the bottom, where the roads to Kailua and Kane'ohe diverged. There they paused, and the jug made the rounds. " We're going out Ko'olauloa side, are we not, Madam?" Kimo inquired, tamping the cork home. '"Ae, 'ae, pololei," the Princess replied. The Pali cliffs were dark above them as the car wound past groves of hau, hala, and banana toward Kane'ohe. Soon the road took them through the sleepy little town, and out along the shore. " Better wake Keaka up, " the Princess said; stertorous snores rumbled from behind them. The bridge between He'eia and Kahalu'u was just ahead. Kimo reached behind and whacked a massive ham. Keaka woke with

a snort; looked around; and then joined his companions in a thorough "HA," expelling the unclean air from their bodies while the car rattled and jolted across the railroad ties which, laid crosswise, formed the bridge. "Princess, I wish you'd picked a night with more moon," Keaka complained from the back, swatting an errant mosquito. "Afraid you'll see something you won't like?" Her Highness queried. " Have another pull at the jug, Keaka." "Spirits of a different kind, paha?" Keaka asked. "After you, my dear." "I implore you not to forget to fuel the driver," Kimo said. "How's the composition coming, Princess?" "We're not quite there yet," she replied. "Out here - Waiahole, Waikane- is McCandless land now. Then we have to get past yourfolksat Hakipu'u and Kualoa." Opposite Mokoli'i, they paused to drain the first jug in honor of the shade of Kimo's brother, killed in a sugar mill accident as a young lad. Passing through Ka'a'awa, they noticed the sea beginning to be less phosphorescent; moonlight followed them into the bay and danced atop the waves as they rounded the curve of Kahana and headed toward Punalu'u. Light gleamed from the railroad tracks mauka of the road, but no cane trains were abroad that night. "This is where we spent our honeymoon ," the Princess exclaimed, pointing to a steep-roofed one-story house that rambled along the ocean behind a fence of white boards. Kimo pulled off the road and the three travellers looked up a narrow valley buttressed with crumbling rock chimneys. "There's a trail up the side of the valley to the right that takes you up to a waterfall. We climbed it like young goats in those days." She accepted the jug from Kimo and drank deeply. "And the ocean bathing- how was it?" Keaka inquired snidely. "It cooled and refreshed us, just as the mountain pool did," the Princess replied. For an instant, the girl bride that she had been peeped from her eyes. Kimo smiled and patted her hand. "Shall we push on?" he suggested. "That steamer will dock in about eight hours. " "Yes, but ho'omanawanui," the Princess pleaded. "This is where I want to remember: here to Hale'iwa, at least." The auto chuffed along. Past Hau'ula, the mountains began to retreat from the ocean. The road wore on through Ui'ie and Kahuku. Few lights greeted them now from the cottage clusters that marked the plantation camps. "Kaliuwa'a!" the Princess exclaimed, jolting Keaka out of his renewed boozy snooze. "It's such a narrow valley. I forgot to look up to see if the akualele were swimming in Kaluanui!" "They were," Kimo replied. "I saw them."

Reassured, the Princess fell into a reverie, rousing only to toast the heiau above Waimea Bay. After what seemed an interminable time, barrelling through a tunnel of ironwoods with occasional glimpses of breakers as the beach swung closer to the road, they saw the twin arches of the bridge at Hale'iwa. Kimo crossed the bridge and pulled up in the front driveway of the hotel. " Guess we all need to stretch our legs a bit," he suggested. The door was unlocked; a single light was turned low on the desk and the night clerk was fast asleep. "Is this any way to receive your ali'i?" Keaka boomed. The clerk jumped awake, tightening his tie, pulling his shirtsleeves down and buttoning the cuffs. Blinking, he bowed to the Princess and her entourage. "What may I get for you?" he asked , training coming to the fore. "Not a thing," she replied, smiling sweetly, "but which way .. . ?" "Just here, Madam, " he replied, leading her on. Kimo and Keaka,left to their own devices, found the corresponding door. The party reassembled on the front Hinai, having secured a fresh jug from the now wide-awake clerk, and fending off further attentions from him. " Mahalo piha," said the Princess, " but this is all we need ." "Allow me," the clerk murmured , and held open the rear door for the Princess. " Eh, Keaka," said Kimo, "are you up to driving for a spell? I've been at it since we left town." "Of course, my dear fellow ," Keaka said,levering his great bulk into the driver's seat. The clerk fluttered around to the front and heaved , heaved, heaved again. With a fart and a sputter, the motor kicked over; the Packard jerked around the driveway and headed west. Clouds scudded across the Leilehua Plain as they rose up to the saddle from Hale'iwa. The moon shone forth intermittently,lulling Keaka's fears of supernatural powers and offering lunar rainbows as the clouds piled up against the Wai'anae volcano. "Ah, Llhu'e .. . there it is," the Princess murmured, leaning across Kimo' slap to gaze over the pastures at the valley to the left of Kolekole Pass. "So far from Kalenakai ... and yet they 're all part of one another," and Kimo began to whistle the tune again. The Princess' hand fell to his sturdy thigh ; she swayed in time to the music, which soon turned to a hum in Kimo's light, clear tenor. "So long ago ... so far away, all the way to Kau 'ai," said the Princess, and the tears that spring unbidden to a widow's eyes shone in hers. Kimo put his arm across her shoulders. "My dear," he said. "Kimo, you understand," she whispered. He leaned over and kissed her softly; she responded, and the kiss became more and more intense.

Keaka drove on impassively through the night; his eyes fixed on far ahead in the dwindling starlight. The final jug had run dry at Wcumuâ&#x20AC;˘ As dawn began to break over Honolulu and the car putt-putted along, Keaka grew ever sleepier. Up the long hill from Halawa, the last several, his head began to nod ... Crackle! Scrape! Tinkle! Crunch! The Packard, wheels still sptlnntln&~ was below the road, fast in a kiawe tree several yards above the first the Moanalua Golf Course. Keaka blubbered, uttering sounds that alterâ&#x20AC;˘ nated between whimpers and stammers. The Princess was beside herself. "Of COURSE, you REALize," she blazed, "that the ship bearing my late husband's earthly remains is due in Honolulu harbor in" (a quick look at the timepiece on her ample bosom) "a little more than three hours. "Furthermore," she continued, ice forming in great sheets over her rapidly sobering visage, "I must appear at the ship properly attired, properly attended, and in the proper frame of mind. I canNOT" -and her voice echoed from the hillsides of 'Aliamanu, 'Aliapa'akai, and Lapakea"greet the Prince in this CONDITION!" Kimoclambered from the back seat next to the Princess, picked his way gingerly through the kiawe thorns, and shinnied down the trunk, his pince-nez glimmering in the half light and his teeth exposed in a grin which he could not conceal. "Fear not, o Pua Mai'ole," he declaimed, "I will bring help!" Skidding slightly, he scaled the embankment and set off, trotting, down the road toward town. History does not record what Kimo said to his haole wife when he finally found a telephone in Kalihi. She left their two children slumbering sweetly in Waikiki and chugged through the early morning light toward Moanalua in the family Duryea. Word had flown, on what more than one early author called "the cocoanut telegraph." Hordes of people, mostly the doughty maka'ainana of Moanalua and Kalihi, streamed out to meet the Princess and escort her back to-town. Keaka found his family house and, unnoticed, deserted the party, to collapse wheezing and groaning on a hikie where he spent the rest of the day sound asleep. As the steamer, towed by the harbor's finest tugs and saluted by the fireboat, eased into its berth, the Princess stepped from a horse-drawn barouche; no one had the ill-breeding to mention that her Packard was still roosting in Moanalua. At the touch of her black-clad foot to the dock, the crowd burst into the age-old, eerie wailing of true Hawaiian mourning. Captain Berger's band, alternating between "The Dead March from Saul" and "Aloha Oe," could hardly be heard . The steamer dock was packed with mourners; tall kahilis ringed the Princess and formed an aisle to the gangway; the Hawaiian societies were all there, each in its regalia. The

funereal scent of lilies mingled with that of 'ilima, maile, and a dozen kinds of ferns . Dressed in a white linen suit, black tie, and black hatband, Kimo stood, respectfully, at a distance, next to his discreetly attired wife. Her brown eyes snapped; otherwise, her expression was one of suitable decorum. Kimo caught the Princess' eye. Lightly, evanescently, as a dragonfly touches upon the water for an instant, only to fly far away: the Princess winked.

NOTE: The above is pure fiction; but it is based on a tale that has prevailed in Honolulu society for 75 years. The Princess and Kimo are drawn/rom two ofthe three characters in the legend; Keaka is a total fabrication. The original of the Keaka character, apparently, became known (in whispers) as " The Prince Consort" in later years. The orthography of the Hawaiian words and place names is that given in the Pukui路Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary (1971) and Place Names Of Hawai'i (Pukui路Elbert-Mookini}, with one exception. "Kau'ai" is a perfectly authentic pronounciation and, therefore, spelling of the name of that island; "Kaua 'i" is a latter-day insult perpetrated, one hears, by the Ni'ihau people. Other place names ("Leahi"vs. "Diamond Head"; " Mokoli'i"vs. "Chinaman's Hat"; " Hanaiakamalama" vs. " Queen Emma Summer Palace''l are given as they would have been in 1908. No glossary is appended; those interested in the meaning of the Hawaiian words can add to their knowledge and experience by looking them up. Same/or the French ones.

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1983 ANNAgram

Gary Kissick GINGKO LEAF

I pick up a gingko leaf, and drop it where it pleases me. Now I must leave]apan. The sun has sent a white moth of light to the forest, in a world without regret has opened a bamboo fan. Sometimes you'd stoop, gathering your departure in silken sleeves, in ink black lacquer, and your kimono would drift from your breast like winter.

MANOA VALLEY THEATRE GHOSTS

Going to Manoa Valley Theatre? Treading on graves for the sake of a 路play? Well, if you must ... , but don't be dismayed when festering ghosts surround you. They'll complain, "We've seen this one before. Always the same. Such a bore. They all die in the end, you know." They'll flirt, "Come here often? All alone? We'd love to run our bones through your hair, rattle our chains through your bones." They'll despair, "We're hungry. No one feeds us. We've grown transparent, thin as air. Plumeria wafts right through us." When they mutter their famous aside- "We think all burials premature, don't you?" do what life does: ignore them. Simply thoroughly read the program. They'll depart, begrudged, to the balcony, where dying conditions are overcrowded (yet they prefer it to private loges). Don't fear them. Don't fault them. Their plight's grave. Their plot's eternal. They don't stand the ghost of a ghost of a chance. When the curtain rises, they're the sigh in silence. When it falls it raises the dust of defiance.

ON SLEEPING WITH KITTENS

All night, attacking padlocks on a deep, sound casket, cats rattle my feet. Graverobbers, shoes thick with mud, spades clangorous as trolleys, they pay no homage to my sleep. They dance on my stone, on its hopeful inscription: HERE LIES A TIRED MAN. MAY HE REST IN PEACE. Their touch is wetter than worms and cold as dew, and the morning wind risen in their limbs swings my dream on a rusty hinge.

Saturday mornings, before my weekly chores, I used to sneak out of the house and across the street, grabbing the first grasshopper waking in the damp California grass along the stream. Carefully hiding a silver hook beneath its green wings, I'd float it out across the gentle ripples towards the end of its life. Just like that. I'd give it the hook and let it ride. All I ever expected for it was that big-mouth bass awaiting its arrival. I didn't think that I was giving up one life to get another, that even childhood was full of sacrifice. I'd just take the bright green thing, pluck it off its only stalk, and give it away as if it were mine to give. I knew someone out there would be fooled, that someone would accept the precious gift. So I just sent it along with a plea of a prayer,

hoping it would spread its wings this time and fly across the wet glass sky, no concern for what inspired its life, or mine, only instinct guiding pain, towards the other side.

I am like my father who never left Hawaii working the dry docks at Pearl, sending the ships back to find their purpose near some foreign port or out at sea. He would rather go home after work to the quiet place beside the stream. It was not just to unwind that he took his cane knife to the mango tree and had me bundle the branches no longer than three feet each while he raked or mowed or weeded the lawn to one pure green. He used to say to me, "What you gonna do next week if the grass don't grow back?" Back then, I couldn't see the sense of his cycles, what freedom we could find in belonging to our subtle seasons of mangos, lichee, or monkey pod beans and then leaves. But now, I stand beside what used to be our stream; the smell of grease or garbage reeks. The influx of certain birds limits the number of mangos I can eat. Even the tv, where he used to say,

"Come quick Mommy, we can go to Paris for free! " is no longer clear enough without a cable hook-up, so fenced in are we with condominiums walking up from town, step by step, up our valley. Now that I've grown up, and gone away, I want to develop my own sense of green. I just want to be able to cup my hands in a clear stream. All I want is to be home free.

Pat Matsueda INFLAMED forK., in childhood

One summer when we were kids we swam every day at Ala Moana Beach. Dropped off in the morning, we were picked up in the afternoon wet, brown, birds just out of the egg. After that, we swam in pools, other beaches, eventually learned to do it right in a college course, where you excelled. But before that, in adolescence, we again swam at Ala Moana. In late afternoon, we went down and swam till we were saturated with ocean, our skins brown and our blood hot. Till the sun slipped in the water and darted through our hair like a yellow fish . Then we left that caress and showered. I screamed and you laughed, and for ten or fifteen minutes we were under that cold, fresh water. Rinsing, cleaning our skins. Coaxing the ocean out of our black hair.

Juliet S. Kono CAR SOUNDS

Some very late nights After much drinking, Uncle Roy's car sounded Loud in the hush of The cold country air. This aroused an iced Anger in grandfather, That sizzled like the steam On the car's hot tail-pipes. It was easy to learn Their comings and goings The knowing of whose Car sounds they were: Uncle Roy's Plymouth Had an efficient sound, With its smooth and deep Wind-up into third gear On that last stretch before home. Then it geared down Before entering the cool cave Of the narrow, lean-to garage. Aunt Sue's second-hand Dodge Was her first car. She drove in on weekends From her secretarial job In Naalehu, Ka'u. Her car ran quietly. But she gassed it when She arrived home, In order, I always thought, ' To announce her arrival.

And upon her departure Sunday afternoons, Children and dogs ran After her in a funnel Of red unsettling dust. For years after that, When we moved to Hilo Town, It was mother's car Up the driveway Or father's noisy truck At five o'clock, after work. And mom and dad in turn, Got to know the rhythm And rail of their own Standards, when late at night, They'd wait and listen for the Cars to pull up into the driveway, When we daughters First learned to drive. So attuned am I To different car sounds That my son's Toyota Is more distinctive Than the neighbor's, Although they are exactly alike. I even know the car Of the neighbor who lives On my right, as opposed . To the Ol)e who liyes on the left.

One by one, Year upon year, Car by car I've gotten To know, through some familiar Or dissimilar resonance.

And I'm like a child once more As I wait for you I imagine myself standing Barefooted on those red cinder roads: The roadside fields dreaming Their white wild flowers And cascading swirls of Golden Monarch butterflies; As a waif of a lost childhood On the bend of some driveway, In a white, by day's end, Dirtied pinafore.

I must know You would never leave To never come back. And as you drive up, Your old car does sound As if it had crossed the Old wooden bridges above the flumes, Traversed the deep-rutted Dirt canefield roads, Swept through the deep muttering Of the long And God-forsaken rains.

You're driving home those Sounds of yesterday with you Its timbre, The dissonance, The impatience. You're chugging home In fits and starts, But love, So dependably!

FOR COMFORT

At sixteen, Grandmother gave birth To her first child. Her dream was to take this Baby back to Hiroshima For her aged parents And sisters to see. Too poor, she would never go Back to wade the soothing Waters of her father's rice paddy, Or slide back The shoji doors, Once open like arms. Did she leave the One connection All those letters Written about this child, Unmailed, For me to find purposely, Years later, while rummaging Through the camphored chests, To learn of her regret? Did she ever turn, For comfort To the man who was, By arrangement, Her husband? Or was he too proud to gather His young wife and child, Tenderly, like petals, That she simply Took the world on Like the child wrapped Upon her back,

Walked into the fields And let fall the light, Incessant rains Upon their dark Uncovered heads.

Kenneth Zamora Damacion

YOUNG HANDS, YOUNG FACE for my mother

Summers ago, after picking plums, my father drove the pickup on the orchard's dirt road raising dust clouds that floated and resettled on the fruit trees' leaves. Sitting in the front cab pressed between my parents, sweat mingled with dust at age seven I thought rain was the maid in God's house. The family headed home, towards town, and my father talked about the row of trees we must pick the next day. My mother's answer was to scold him, saying "It's finished! " meaning work was over and the boy no longer wanted to hear about it. I twisted around on the seat and made faces at my brothers and sisters crouched low or lying against the floor of the flatbed. My older brother sat proud, exposed, and scowled at the strangers or rich school chums caught behind our slow truck. Reaching home, we children pushed out like soldiers hitting a beachhead, shouting out numbers for who got to shower first, then next. My mother wearily entered her house and sat at the kitchen table. She pulled off the cotton gardener gloves and untied the dirty ribbon that wrapped the straw hat.

Next she took off her work blouse: she held up her light-colored arms and hands to show us. We groaned, unimpressed, as with a bad magician's magic, and turned our attention back to the commercial on television promising how youthful soap can keep your hands, your face.

.:'

Jim Daniels MOVING OUT FOR THE LAST TIME

Helping me pack, my mother looks around as if hopeful of finding something to hold me there. She stacks my clothes like piles of her love sturdy and consistent, and finds whatever I can't. My father holds the paper in front of him. It crackles between his fingers, the page never turns. He sighs a sigh that halts once or twice. He pets my surprised dog. We drink beer together all evening until they follow each other to bed. I stay up all night soaking in the love that is in the air.

Fred 0. Baysa MEJIRO IN A GUAVA GROVE

I come to feed the sparrows scattering seeds beneath long stalks of bamboo watching the sun filter through layers of crisp leaves that fan with the lightest breeze. The light slips through the leaves like a cracked egg through lax fingers. Three sparrows are cautious flitting from branch to the palm of a leaf subtracting themselves one by one from the higher branch adding to a lower branch until all pause three arm lengths away. I close my eyes. In a guava grove I see a mejiro nervously inspecting each yellow fruit neck jerking in response to a jittery curiosity. I feel his ringed eye scanning my dream for time wanting only the moment to break a fruit open peck out a seed and vanish before the first sparrow abandons the lowest branch.

Elisa Mui LINES

"Stay, love, a while longer; The night is cold, the wind grows stronger." "Alas, I cannot stay. I must return before the day To that dark and sunless shore Thou'lt find me where the black hawks soar." "Stay, love, why must thou leave me? If thou must hence, take me with thee."

" Dear, alone I go When next we meet I do not know Old enchantment binds me more Than love. I go where the black hawks soar."

Phyllis Thompson KOETSU: MOON AND RABBIT for Darryl and Martin

The earth is a mirror of thoughts . .. . Death is the dark backing the mirror needs if we are to see anything. Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gtft

It is a cold moon, a March night. The moon is a mirror, night The dark backing the mirror needs So we can see What images are pummeled there. For months the moon has come and gone. Gold. Now it hangs full With the ancient witness, heavy with travel. All that time. Now it is close to earth. The rabbit halts. He looks back at the lowering moon From the meadow he quivers in. The moon-colored clover He nibbles is young as the spring grass against His soft pelt- that young. Tonight everything around him is That young, except the gold mirror Hanging close enough to show him how long he's had to be quick. There is no medicine for this appearance. Tonight he will jump back into the moon.

Gene Frumkin

SEVERAL EVENINGS WITH 路. THE HONOLULU SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

A darkhaired woman plays the oboe. Over the hills clouds cluster like families from China or Japan, saying, "Do not weep too softly." Farther out, at Waikiki, the dusklight is lucently orange, almost a flavor. Love is more pretentious than any other feeling, yet we go on wearing it, softly, around our necks. A darkhaired woman pauses, waits for a sign to play her oboe, and mutters something, smiling, to the flutist next to her, who grins because he is young and knows the woman is not really splendid, not the full moon itself docking in the sky like a stately ship. It is warm, of course; nobody wears clothes. The harbor, newly polished, shines with memories of soft Fitzgerald evenings on somebody's yacht, when there was nothing to say, nothing to wish for. Playing the oboe, the darkhaired woman briefly communicates with all the violins who, one can see, are more important. Soon it will be morning, perhaps a shower still clinging to the eaves and leaves outdoors. Poor beautiful woman. An oboe in a large orchestra and, distantly, love too soft, too ripe. Distantly, new clouds form overhead, still white, whispering to one another with adolescent intensity.

SILVER BUTTON

Scrapes the words from his lips: yesterday's, last week's. A button missing. She will buy a new blouse at Bloomingdale's. Cloudy day, the crows convene in his two elms, chattering like drunken undertakers. Other thoughts form in his hands. Soon she will return, carrying packages through two feet of snow. How cold it is! A white mucus covers his tongue. The crows park on the icy pond to the north. She is late, perhaps won't come back until tomorrow, next week. A silver button. He cracks two eggshells in order to crush the yolks. Words, lonely creatures, shrivel at the roots when they cannot hear their shapes.

Holly Yamada FIXING RANDOM

The first time she slept with him he seemed much more interested in welts on her back than in anything she had to say about her hobbies, or family, or the existence of God, or any of the other getting-to路 postcoital topics. He was delighted with the tidy rows and columns spread across her shoulder blades and down the length of her back. across, ten down. That afternoon Doctor Hertz had injected Kassie with sixty varieties serum, each of which were labeled on a corresponding chart inmcatra what kind of substance he would place in each row. He slit the skin short, light, razor blade strokes, then used an eyedropper to insert versions of ragweed, household dust, diverse pollens, and canine Twenty minutes later the welts appeared, the largest expanding bright rosy inch and a half. A crisp white figure appeared in the " My God, those suckers are huge!" Doctor Hertz' nurse exploded. "I you're getting four plus reactions on practically everything!" naked welt ridden back made Nurse Bladdy's day. " I'm afraid you're very allergic to a great many things," the informed her. She would have to begin a weekly program of teaching her body to tolerate the derelict plant and animal parts. personalized serum, consisting of all those compounds that wreaked on her respiratory tract and mucus membranes, would be diluted injected into her system. As she became accustomed to them, higher and stronger solutions would be introduced. Martin straddled her from behind and ran tongue and lips froni spot spot. "Martin, they itch." He grazed fingernails up and down. "Martin, they hurt." He kissed her coccyx. He wanted to know if t leave scars. "I don't think so. They'd better not." "Oh." Martin sounded disappointed. He connected the wounds with lipstick lines. "Do you have darker?"

"I don't want it any darker. " He backed her up to the mirror. "Look." Kassie looked over her shoulder at the epithelial grid and tried to mber what initially attracted her to Martin. He had been standing in drafting supplies section of the stationery store, giggling over a stack of paper. He seemed especially appealing not only because he was ing by himself in a public place, but because she was rebounding from discord she'd been having with Fred lately. Fred had become increasingly clingy the more she backed off from him. been pursuing an amorous commitment from her, but the more re she felt , the more indecisive she became. Even mild gestures of am~ct1on threw her into a sleepless state of internal debate. Kassie could recall last Saturday night. Fred wanted to be close, but she couldn't possibly sit on his lap without first thinking about the day when the lap just wouldn't be there anymore, or the time when it just wouldn't look like such a nice lap after all. Not only that, but what's a lap standing up? Actually it looked pretty nice standing up too. But then, just when she'd get used to that , there it would be sitting down again, and he'd be asking her more questions. "So maybe we should just take a nap, you know, because you're so tired and everything." "No, I'd just wake up again." " What do you mean you'd just wake up again? That's what you're supposed to do after a nap." "I don't know, it just seems futile." "Futile. Futile? What, sleeping? You have to sleep, everyone does." . "Everyone? Really? Don't lie to me Fred. I read somewhere that some man just decided he didn't need to sleep anymore, so he didn't. He just didn 't. Don't lie to me." ''I'm going. I'm taking the rest of my chicken and my wine and I'm going." She followed him into the kitchen and handed him a too-small piece of tin foil. He forced the silver over bulging poultry leftovers; a thigh poked through and he said nothing more. The door closed, unslammed. Kassie looked through the venetian blinds: Fred was smashing the bird onto the hood of his Impala with the Bordeaux; the bottle broke and he assaulted the right front tire. She knocked her forehead to the window and murmured to the pane, "Oh God, I'm sorry. Goodbye, I'm sorry . .. I'm sorry." She tried to combat the guilt. "Why should I care? Fred's a pig. He fucks anything that moves and eats anything that doesn't. " Kassie turned away from the sill. She shut off the test pattern and watched the dying blue dot disappear

from the screen. She turned the television on again and hoped the monotony would lure her into slumber. Perhaps she would pretend Fred was her favorite person arid she would fall asleep in his arms and he would stroke her hair and gently kiss her eyes. Maybe she could sleep like that through the long night ahead. Maybe Fred really was her favorite person. She embraced her pillow then snuggled into it. Fred's telephone call yanked Kassie from thick dreams, already thinning out into wispy amnesia. "Hi, I forgot to say goodbye when I left ... and to thank you, I forgot to thank you." Kassie couldn't move lips and larynx yet. Fred continued. "But really, I didn't forget, I just got too pissed, you know. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry, and goodbye, and thank you." "Fred." "What." "Fred, why is it that when you apologize for getting pissed, you still sound angry?" "Who's angry? I called to say goodbye." "Fred, I'm sorry, it's just that I was asleep." "Asleep? Don't you think that's a bit futile ... I'm sorry I woke you up." "It's okay." "It's not okay, I'm sorry." "I know, I'm sorry too. I had a good time tonight. I really did. You make good chicken." Their hot and cold rapport had been going on for close to a year. Fred's exasperation with Kassie finally caused him to seek comfort elsewhere. So, when Martin asked her if she wanted to come up to his place and see his graphs, she said, " Whatever happened to etchings?" He told her he had a graph of an etching. And so he did.

Martin showed her his graphs. His walls, ceiling, and kitchen appliances werecovered with them. They were mounted, they were framed, they were technicolor, they were black and white. He had a green transparent grid with a red plot line indicating the rate of suicide as a function of holidays. The holidays were arranged in chronological order along its axis. He called it his Christmas graph because Christmas was the highest point on the chart where the X andY axis met. Kassie marveled at a cotton patchwork graph; it measured the radius of sweat stains as a function of the quantity of fried foods consumed. His current project involved the reGording of路accidental casualties as a function of clandestine malice. Martin was convinced that somebody could

die from tripping over a lamp cord if somebody else really wanted them to. Kassie insisted that it was an impossible as well as a ridiculous task to find those kinds of things out. She realized, however, that it didn't seem to matter to Martin how accurate his data was. The important thing was to organize it so it made an expressive looking graph. He called himself a graphic artist. She thought there was something repugnant about his seemingly well路 charted explanations to irrelevant questions. But through his hobby, Martin seemed to construe an arbitrary sense of order from a randomly constructed world; it ultimately expanded into a compulsion that neutral路 ized most aspects of his personality. Her favorite graph plotted the expanded volume of popcorn as a function of the color of pan used to pop it in. Martin had glued various sizes of the exploded kernels along the popcorn axis.

That was the first and last time she touched him or talked to him , although she would see him once more. She thought later that maybe it was the sound of her tap shoes that had made Martin look up.

Usually her attention was fully consumed with the orders snapped out by her dance instructor, but today she couldn't keep her mind on them. The knowledge of Fred's new love interest, coupled with the fact that she was losing respect for her teacher, made concentrating on the steps more of a chore than a joyful indulgence. Anita was quite old, archaic possibly. The rings around her limbs indicated prehistoric beginnings. There were lines on her legs going here and there, and branching off into something blue, or sometimes purple and green, all highly visible through cream pigmented tights. Her orangish hair exploded from scalp pores, waved out, and then suspended in space four inches from her head. Kassie's fondness for her had diminished considerably since Anita had recommended she see an allergist to "unplug that foggy head" of hers. Anita shouted the tap sequence over the song on the tape player. "Hop, back Irish, flap, ball change, flap, ball change." Fred's new girlfriend probably couldn't tap dance her way out of a paper bag. He'd be sorry. He'd niiss her double shuffle in time.

"To the music please!" Anita was a stickler for time. " Tap dancing percussive and rhythmically punctual." Fred's new girlfriend probably snaps her fingers on one and three. "Flap, heel heel, flap, heel heel." I

Fred was a heel. Kassie discovered op Tu¢ad~y that he had given the exactly the same Valentine's Day card he h~fll ·~ven her the year before. even wrote the same mushy poem in it except ~~at "stately carriage" been changed to "virginal visage." She had seen the two nuzzling at the stop. She found sanctity in the knowledge that Fred hated riding the bus a reluctant passenger since he had finally put his car in the body shop. a heel. After class Kassie decided she wouldn't change clothes or shoes; wanted to make lots of noise when she walked home. She bolted out studio door and saw a crouched figure picking up cigarette butts from side of the street. Martin looked up and tt~cked a stack of graph paper and manila envelope under his arm. He backed off from the curb. Martin never saw the bus, but he probably felt it. Kassie stayed in the same spot the whole time. She stayed through de boarding of the bus when Fred got off and stared at her. She stayed he began to walk towards her, oblivio,u s to anything except the ""~•tt"''""" blood-sprayed sheets of paper. She stayet\ when Fred turned around and walked away. She stayed through .th~ arrival and departure of t too-late ambulance. She stayed until trickles of movement surfaced from tumultuous insides. Hypnotic propulsion transported Kassie down the sidewalk. It was as if her legs and feet were functioning independently of the rest of her body, for they seemed to remember the tap sequence without Kassie's knowledge.

Mitchell LesCarbeau THE HEAVEN OF WITCHES

Here there is no need of magic. At first we should have known something amiss in the refusal of a boiling eye to scallop properly, or the way our footsoles prickled during all those last failed incantations. Later, when hands burst from dirt and grabbed at ankles or the hems of our skirts, we knew that it was time. Our brooms have carried us below roots and soil to a place where rocks are liquid, where the beards are plucked from our faces, where all the boils and scar tissue smooth themselves into our skin, grown rosy, and disappear forever. Our breasts lose their creases and bloom to the risen breasts of doves. Freed from their granulation and the bitter acids of their milk , white, not black, s pills at last. We do not believe we are really here until our spells come true before we have uttered them, before covetousness and spite can mobilize our tongues. The newts, severed thumbs , the cackling are all things of the past: our malice unfurls with a sigh. Here there is no hatred. Here all things kind are forbidden.

So we learn to lower our eyes although we have become girls again to the variously colored fiends whose trunks and tusks we always thought populated our dreams only but who saunter now past us, the recently arrived, too real to touch, too hot and erect for fingers still reminiscent of the earth, its mountain snows and generosities. It is only after we gather in a circle and burn the tattered black gowns, our gloves, the oddly patterned hats, burn even the cats which galloped so loyally after us behind our broom-ends our beloved cats which despite their fangs and blue-glowing eyes still suggested the earth, our homesit is not until we blacken our lids and cheeks with the combined ashes of our extinguished lives that we line up singly in the dark and feel the farthest tips of our finally soft virgin walls touched by the stiffened fire of a form we cannot see but feel, smothering our faces against the fur and the smoke but we do not care so in love are we for the first time, so in love at last.

So this is love. This is our heaven. We cannot help but plot.

CRESCENT PARK

A sullen watchman with holstered clump of keys and shoulder-slung clock guards what's left of the standing hulks. The cables, shells, the bevel gears which once flung terrified children into heaven and set them softly down again malinger now in a granulation of rust. Inside the carousel's cupola hornets swarm above the motionless carvings of horses even now straining in mid-stride for the wide eyes and sticky fingers. The midway 's panels blister and flake their gaudy colors to the ground; effaced are painted heads of clowns, and ribs of funhouse skeletons are the littered nests of mice. The sullen watchman punches his clock, the seasons gut the park and warp its roofs; this is where the ghosts of children wing their way , moth-like, to roost.

Loretta Petrie IN THE VALLEY OF THE TEMPLES

I have come beyond the burial ground with its garden of headstones to a sequestered grovecome to see this likeness of Byodo-in. I have seen the gilded Buddha sitting as I do now, only he is inside and I am outside looking in. The Buddha smiles, content to sit and smile forever. Outside inverted images of rooflines repeat their curves in the reflecting pool this garden with its pines not made of stone. Inside the incense burns. Here, the temple bell resounds. A koi , feeding among the lilies , makes the temple sway, dissolve, then pull itself together. The carp, a flash of black on brass, darts through the temple's portal, lost somewhere in the semblance of a shrine. I cannot see down there.

Perhaps I should think blank thoughts. But why erase the bell, the pool, the garden? I hunger, like greedy carp, for reflections such as these. No carp drowns itself on the other side of illusions. I think they live long lives. Although they smile, they do not swim content forever.

Reuben Tam LETTER FROM KAUAI

Strange clouds come to our mountains. Yesterday , over Anahola , a spiral of silver mist, like an ice ghost from Siberia. Then it vanished, and the crags edged to redness again, and the twin peaks resumed their command of the district of Kawaihau. All along our shores the sun attends us. It is unfailing. It anchors our days. But the nights clatter like fronds, sieving the Tropic of Cancer to beads of cold weather. Kamchatka to the northwest may be usurping our stars. We are losing our legends and our sense of island. Salt coats our roads and lanais . It appears on our lawns. It gleams on the sword-leaves of hala. We imagine icicles. We dream of channels evaporated to limestone and crystals, and of an ocean folded into grids of seamounts. In the calm shelter of cliffs we swim in the shallows, trusting the current in its steady streaming. Where a reef and a stream and a lava ledge converge we lie down on white sand in the realm of sea-level , to see daylight ending in sand, and the horizon faltering. Stone by stone our mountains are falling into the sea, to join the drowned islands of the northwest rift Kaula, Nihoa , Necker, Gardner, and the shoalsLaysan, La Perouse, Pearl and Hermes , swirls of reef breaking and breaking into the North Pacific night.

Bill Danks PARIS IN THE WINTER PIAFF IN THE RAIN

Sunset Orly Airport pulls me in from Spain then tosses me out again in a long limousine up dim crooked little a lleys into bright perfect Paris with rows of black oaks hiding in the rain Just then Piaff comes calling from the dashboard speaker She's soon driving us all pushing the sleepy gray limo along Her voice keeping u s steady on the street Piaff comes on li ke the city's own soul Piaff comes on through the rain and dirty streets a lleys and roads and boulevards of static dance frozen on our dashboard Piaff at the wheel taking u s all through the night city We are more than just safely driven.

ANGELIKA (Guyana)

I begged her to be beautiful, she refused. For months she remained the most ordinary goddess. We tried singing together, but she was scared of my guitar and on even the strongest tunes our voices were slaughtered by the wind. Then summer came and day by day I watched the sun ripen her like the sweetest blackberry I ever ate. I watched her eyes growing older more knowing and loving and strong. She said my songs found their way up under her s hort skirts to kiss the warmth of her thighs. She danced for me ever y dawn on the bright sand , the inhumanly careless beauty of her golden body naked to the new s u n. Is s he gone now for good? I do not know. All my meticulou s philosophies won 't tell me , won't even offer me a clue.

Perhaps a funeral among men is a wedding feast to the angels. Perhaps her wedding to him was my own burial. Perhaps . ..

I fell to your dark dream. Romancing the stable and sharing the hay, we courted the meadow with our tails flying. Hooves and manes were wild in the frenzy, and the pace was hot and tempestuous. I was at ease in going the distance, but suddenly you broke stride, flared your nostrils, and galloped over the hill to a herd of Mustangs. As the dust settled, I stood in the empty meadow, and realized what kind of thoroughbred you were.

You are a nightmare, prancing in the dark with neon eyes, searching for another stallion to stud.

Leonard Nathan THE LION FARM

East of Los Angeles in a small town called El Monte there used to be a farm for lions, and on quiet days (and back then, days could be quiet) you would sometimes hear a rumble like far-off thunder. 4

It faded with so many other dreams after the Great War, replaced , I guess, by small houses, leaving only in fall a tawny shadow in the trees and the memory of a noble fear caged. This is the last harvest of that farm, a few words on what its owners hoped to raise - money by bringing home the beast that could eat humans, who would pay to see what time would do for nothing.

Geoline Abraham

THE MARINER'S PRINCESS

If a star fell into this bottle Of empty dreams tossed at high tide Into the midst of a cold cerulean sea Turning crimson with the transition into night As the Princess Sophia drowns Off the icy Alaskan coast,

Perhaps, on some distant black sand shore Sprinkled with the olive tears Of an ancient Polynesian goddess, This bottle will find its way to your heart And light the darkness that comes With mourning a lover lost at sea. Look towards the midnight sky. You will find me, A new star cast amongst the Pleiades , Sailing the Princess once more.

Esther Yoon

VANISHING POINT

She took some time to remember me. I held her hand. Cold. She used to massage my stomach whenever it hurt, her hands barely touching my skin as they moved in a slow circular motion like a merry-go-round in an amusement park, her hypnotic voice repeating Naeson ftnyakson ida- my hand is the medicine hand. I believed her. The same hands braided her long salt-and-pepper hair with the swift strokes of an artist. I begged her to teach me to braid as quickly. She s miled , showing the s pace between her two front teeth, and replied, " When you come big, you going know." Now her fingers hardly held mine; they felt as light as the dried backbone of a cod fish. What had happened to them? Where does all the life go? There was a woman in my village who died for three days. Her soul stayed on earth for the first day. She saw a man weeping and said, " Brother, I am here," but he could not hear or see her. She walked through the village; no one noticed her presence. This, she thought, must be death. My father often talks about the days when Grandma was a koksaeng, a cook, for the camp's bachelors, when she picked pineapples and harvested sugar cane, when s he worked as a part-time tailor at night, and when s he signed the divorce papers at a time when divorce was synonymous with murder . She, alone, supported her seven children with numerous jobs paying less than a dollar a day. I once asked about her marriage. She told me her brother had come one day to s how her two pictures: one a man whose face she especia lly liked, the other the one s he had married. He s howed her the photographs as if she had a choice, as if her life had not been already planned, as if she were free. Picture brides. Decisions made on the twist of a lip or the curve of a nose. His decision. She was the one chosen or not chosen. On the second day, a stranger approached the woman and led her to an enormous house filled with people who could not be distinguished by sex, race, or age. "Where are my sisters and brothers?" asked the woman. " It does not matter, " the stranger replied. "We are all extensions of one another; we share the food and work equally. " "I have to go Grandma ... I don 't want to but Daddy waiting for me." My father hates hospitals; they always have that sickeningly sweet death

smell. I hate seeing you like this. I wish I could tell you that I love you. She did not let go of my hand. Her grip became tighter, more demanding as she stared at me with her faded brown eyes the way a seal looks before it's casually clubbed. Are there things you want to say too? Why does itshaml us to express our feelings? The woman finished the tour of the house and stepped outside. Beyond. tltt gardens, she saw nothing- as if she were staring at an incomplete painting. She asked the stranger about this. "That is hell," the stranger replied. ''I'm going to work in the pineapple fields this summer." "Save money for college," she whispered. Till now she had been silent; it took great effort to speak. For a moment I expected her to read my palm and recite her litany of frugality: Money is running away, remember millionaire story!" I know, I know ... a millionaire lost a nickel and was determined to look/or it. So he got a shovel and started moving the earth to find it. That is why thereiJ a gulch in Kipapa. Yes, even five cents important. No forget. I looked at her palm, now scarred from the years of meaningless, monotonous labor: no small lines, just four deep ones forming an M. I smiled thinking even her body displayed no extravagance, no contradictions to her thrift and simple life. Visiting hours were over. I told her I must go. No tears, no words of endearment- she taught me that. On the third day the woman was pulling weeds in the garden. She was thinking about the old life and how chores, dress, and manners according to status. Suddenly a dog stomped on the vegetables. The woma" chased the dog, tried to catch it. The dog ran to the bridge and - as she was about to grab it- jumped into the river. Then the woman was back in her body, in her house, in Korea. That night, I dreamt about the time my uncle's car, parked in front Grandma's house, was hit. Only, I imagined that the car was parked at end of a tunnel, waiting. A drunk driver was in the tunnel, towards it, must have been doing ninety, did not try to stop ... that impinged on the other ... blackness, like the negative of a picture, the scene. There was no sound. Then I heard a faint bell: gong, gong, gong. The phone. I answered , afraid of calls at 3:00a.m. They said she expired ... expired like a driver's license, or the date on the back of a of aspirin, or a Pay ' n Save coupon. I'd like to tell you that I cried, that I was angry, but I cannot. I nothing. When I was little, I had told her t hat if she died my tears make a river. Oh god, what was it that she said .. . What was it? .. . remember now: Don't cry, think about life. So I did. I didn't think about reincarnation or life in heaven, but a

what it had been like in my mother's womb: blank, infinite blankness , infinite s pace, not scary, not ugly , but tranquil, an undisturbed lake onto which a tiny leaf has fallen, making waves that ripple away, only to return, finally , to the banks.

Keolani Taitano

I am a born again beast With haunches high To build a taller, deeper nest I am a carving, casting creature Though I hold my habits with my birdsong speech Intriguing and wooing myself with meaning Like clay Like a song Like a howling Or ticking, or scraping. Web my web, imagination, My pride, my territory I would give it my own scent If I were not ashamed like an ape Who builds his face with intention And smiles as he flees .

Jaroslav Liska A WANDERER

Blueberries I cannot find Along the road, Roaring trucks Roll me down to the West. Icarus, They say, ended his flight With a slow whisper On blue lips.

Thomas M. Cashman SUNSET BEACH AT NIGHT

Late at night I am sometimes restless and go down to the beach where the winter surf rolls. The surge leaps from the black, white foam bright against the sea, rushes to melt in a slope of sand. The milky way swirls from Orion northward through Taurus, and down to the sea. Phosphorescent grains from the night's flood kick up in the sands under my feet. Fleeting sparks mix with the swirl, circles flow into circles, their light lost in a nebula that pulls them back to the stars. A brief nimbus from a darkened star, an obscure course of light that returns to light. The sea rejoins the heavens.

january, 1

Roland Tharp BEFORE THE STORM IN PROGRESSO

Miles of sand, kilometers of littoral, shells of sucking animals shrugged off by the fastidious Gulf she's green, her muscles ripple like a dancer sunning offshore, Goddess of Hurricane. Wary people bathe, breathe her wet breath, face her in the open cantina, eat her chopped animals. You and the juke box put up a good front. Shuttered blocks: homes of rich Mexicans, tourist hotels: they yawn, hold still for painters freshening pastel facades. Hot palms pick up sudden gusts, groan, a hat tumbles south, white clouds stretch, exercise. Cars and campers filled with girls from Florida dot the boulevard. On the wall brown boys dig in their toes. Coiled high with rope, funnelled down a track of hacked scrub, fired ties, pouring from a continent of steaming hemp and jungle, railroad cars jostle toward the north pier. Grinning brothers, faces like rockfish, cross the track, big catch on their shoulders. Offshore a freighter tosses in the roads, sloshed

by her limbering fingers, by the green dancer.

Arthur G. Kimball WONDER WHEEL

there in 1893 Chicago as Little Egypt sways the masses, triumphant by arc and curve, tastier than a nickel beer or free lunch, hard on the n erve, standing the Midway mob on its ear, until the n ew Queen soaring over the ostriches, celluloid collars, and peppermint shirts, grand seer for p erfection , seems to possess all-the great Ferris wh eel, majestic in motion, or poised, while by homage of f earful joy the captives celebrate with sways and squeals that transient air, th e perilous brief fling , glad and giddy until the queen h erself yields to the Goddess Fortuna's long-held d ecree for high and low alike, takes one las t round of the world 's fair, one final swing

Peter Gorham

PEREGRINE FALCON

Rising in long arcs along thermals from the floor of the saguaro-studded desert five miles down and out to the southwest You become the unspoken answer to everything: a name which is not going to be repeated. Once, wheeling slowly around the hips and hollows of the manzanita ridges above me, you stop, fixing a place between two halves of the air; between two pulses of the blood; the inside and the Outside. Only your eyes can still remember the earth. And in the last red of the dusk I catch sight of you again, shaping a cool unmoving darkness against the returning night sky. Gold Arcturus appears along the curve of your wingtip. I do not see you finally turn and drift off, but you have already defined a new geometry: your eye a star; your body an unheard-of constellation.

june 24, 1982 Mt. Hopkins, A

BOB THE ALIEN

Bob is a strange name for an alien, but it was the best one I could think of. E.T. was taken already. For about three weeks, something was going through our trash cans. I had to clean up the mess, of course, so I wanted to find out what was making the mess in the first place. Dad said it was a dog. One night I sneaked out of the house and waited near the trash cans, hiding. Bob sh owed up, and I was -scared stiff as a stick. He went through the trash , pulled out part of the fish I had left on my plate at dinner, and ran off. For the next few nights I tried to follow Bob but he was really scared and ran fast. I started leaving Reese's Pieces out for h im, and finally I could walk right up to Bob a nd he didn 't run away. It's not like aliens can go and rent hotel rooms, so I had to let Bob live up in my treehouse. Bob talked, I think, but I couldn't understand a word. He couldn 't understand me, either. I felt sorry for Bob becau se he cried every night before he went to sleep. Anyway, I think he was crying. He wanted to go back to his planet just like I wanted to go back to New York. "Son," my Dad had told me, "we've got to move . . .no c hoice. Them niggers'll be taking over the whole town next thing . . ." When we got here, I cried just like Bob. After a month , I figured Bob probably wanted to call his planet to ask for help. I went to thejunkyard and found w hat was left of about five radios and took them back to the treehouse. Earth radios must not be technological enough for aliens because Bob couldn't do much with them. One radio made some noise, though. Bob played with the radio for a minute a nd a voice came out. The voice talked just like Bob! Bob listened for a few minutes, but then turned the radio off. I think h e wanted to cry but didn' t want to in front of me. Bob and I had a lot of fun together most of the time. Once, when Mom and Dad were gone, we went into the kitchen a nd Bob ma de me food from his planet. It was great. Usually Mom has to force me to eat things like tomatoes and lettuce. It was great having Bob around . One day he even cleaned my room with levita tion, though I wasn't there to see it. And once I asked Bob if he could u se his mental telepathy to make Mom let me go to the carnival in town, and he did it for me becau se s he let me go. Bob didn't u se

his alien powers very often, I guess because he didn't want to show off or us into trouble. As time went by, Bob got more and more used to Eart h. I taught things he would need to know when he met the President. I knew that would have to tell someone about the alien living in my treehouse sooner later. I taught Bob how to use forks and knives and lots of other things. also taught him how to use a yo-yo. The better I got to know Bob, the more thought people of Earth would be able to accept him . He didn't look much different from people, and once when he cut himself on a clot hanger I saw that he had red blood just like us. I wasn't really sure I wanted to tell anyone about Bob. Teddy had two-headed snake that he told people about, and some guys came and took to a freak show. Teddy missed Cain and Abel, and I knew I would miss I didn't want them to put Bob in a cage. About a week ago, Bob started getting real sick. I didn't know what to except to take him to a doctor. The only doctor I knew of was Dr. Pfiefer, his office was in the middle of town. I had to think of a way to disguise and it wasn't Halloween like in E. T. and Bob would have looked real walking down the street in a sheet. Instead, I got one of Mom's hats Dad's raincoat and put them on Bob. Bob kept coughing, and I kept sayi "God Bless" even though he probably didn't understand what I was s It was real scary walking toward Dr. Pfiefer's office, but no one even Bob. I was so relieved. Then I realized that Bob might have made h.u ..,c111â&#x20AC;˘ invisible to everyone but me- so of course no one could see him . To test my theory, I took off Bob's hat and coat. I was right. We walked along, people couldn't see Bob! I said "hello" to people I knew, and they thought was alone. We got to Dr. Pfiefer's building, and Bob took off across the street. I shocked. Bob went over to a person on the other side of the road, and realized that it was another alien! Bob spoke to the other alien - I think was a grown-up alien- and then came back over to me. It must have Bob that his mission had not been completed and that he would have to a while longer. I was glad. Bob made himself visible for Dr. Pfiefer, and the doctor seemed only a s urprised to see an alien in his office. The doctor looked Bob over, and took me aside. "He's an alien, isn't he?" he asked. "Kind of," I said. "Have you told anyone?" "No," I said. "Promise you won't spill t he beans, please... " "I promise," the doctor said, laughing. I think people can trust d Bob and I left Dr. Pfiefer's office and went home. When we got t there were two police cars in the driveway. We didn't see them until it

â&#x20AC;˘ too late. Bob tried to run, but they caught him. I guess people can't always trust doctors. "Son," my father said, "we were so worried." "You never know what an alien is going to do!" my mother said. From the front yard, I waved good-bye to Bob. They took him off in their police car. My parents said that Bob was going back to where he came from, and I was glad about that. Bob had been an outcast like Cain and Abel. The police called a few weeks later and told my parents that Bob's real name was Carli to, but I still think of him as Bob. I look up at the sky every night, just in case Bob should come back. I know he will. I'm happy Bob came here. And I'm happy, too, that parents are around to remind us that aliens are different from us, because for a while there I almost forgot.

Robert W exelblatt

AFTER THE EXAM

The coffee rushes to meet the cup which so embraces the darkness as to become dark itself. Smoke unfolds in the suddenly uncharged office air, like thought. Take off the armband, put up your feet, breathe. How was the hall? Filled up, crammed with hyperventilations, expectations alternately seated - brimful with the anxiety of the special occasion; the proctors and proctees grudgingly trapped by one another; the lights too bright; the time about to be savagely scrawled across the vast tabula rasa; bluebooks stacked and uniform as artillery shells. The whispers slowly ceased; heads bent over; faces screwed themselves into the set task. Questions bred questions which begot answers.

Students, take your pens and write, though you may be scared and tight, answers that just might reveal part of what you know or feel. Tests, like flowers, age and fade , and even later on your grade, that new bloom, turned frail and rotten , will someday be by you forgotten; still, this jagged electricity holds an odd sort of felicity. Though hateful, the ordained doom of the cramped and sweating womb is set upon us, every one. The clock's a proctor; till we're done the world will set us test on test and scarcely note who does the best. III

The discipline of the ribs holds the heart. Compassion is futile, for what can you do short of spoiling the moment by shouting: "Here! These are the answers. Now go home and stop suffering! " No, a test is the freest of all possible gifts. The earth is full of stones against which you can hone your knives. Ribs do not merely make a cage.

AGAINST DISCOURAGEMENT

You know it's mere vanity, this wishing to be told you've been a swan all along, needing a license to breathe someone else's air; yet the want of a nod or some smudged stamp has left you stateless, a refugee tiptoeing through your shattered globe, forlorn and feckless and unshod. I see you, conquistador of deserts, wandering your room, charting each square and minim of its narrowness: warped walls, the unexpansive ceiling, two dismal lamps. Have you done your uttermost then, pushed self to self's last frame, where it says The End? Have you forgotten that - for such as you it's the inside of the camera that shadows forth the warrantless world? The best runner outstrips his exhaustion, ignores the finish and forgets the start, moved, not by the wreath, but inside his heart.

Houston Wood

FIRST DAYS IN EXILE, 1984

Hiking the Berkeley blocks studying the concrete acres ' crops, staring at patches of yard tended as intensively as a rich woman's hair. Growth here is self-conscious, for people and for plants. Each house has its own museum, flowers, pruned bushes, trimmed hedges, artificial remnants of the rhythm cities destroy as they grow. Even the grass is manicured like pedigree lapdogs, as unlike the wildness of the ohia forests I left as city dogs from their ancestors, the wolves.

Asian restaurants, Italian ice cream parlors, cappuccino and croissant cafes crowd the streets like colorful weeds. At the corners where I remember musicians, magicians and mad men, now I hear the wind of bankers and real estate ministers blowing the gospel of money. "Only the stupid remain poor," they declare.

Nostalgia for the last war we did not lose, for Korea, the 50s, covers the youth like snow. Madras bermuda shorts, penny loafers, Marilyn and James Dean. I am lost in the cold familiarity. Pants are pegged. The fas hion of hearts too has grown tight.

My second day I wander to St. Joseph the Workman's Church to hear Paul Krassner admit to spiritual mysteries of the sphincter while introducing Ken Kesey who reads his short story Of the Beatles and Lennon's death before offering another nugget for the rubble of the Neal Cassidy legend, then fighting tears to share the recent automobile death of his wrestler-son Jed, explaining his grief is the grief of fathers in Lebanon, in Salvador. We must elect Godzilla, any dog rather than Bonzo. We 300 old radicals applaud ourselves and Ken for keeping the faith and surviving. My third day I buy tickets for Doris Lessing's reading and plow toward Cal to hear Francois Mitterrand preach on the righteousness of the Western Alliance. I pause for cafe au lait and the Chronicle. Major Eruption of Hawaii's Mauna Loa Volcano, a meek headline says, below the bold print about Meese's corruption and Salvador's deadly election theatre. The narrow Telegraph Canyon suddenly seems a prison. I feel faint as before no poetry. My heart pounds as nq woman can make it. I admit I have fled what I love. I miss Pele as much this morning as Kesey misses hi.s Jed. '\

By the time I leave the Cafe Med Pele has thrown out lava enough to bury Berkeley. She has buried me. And my brain will not stop singing, Pele is life, Pele is art, as I live in these fields of houses with their proud careful gardens where all wildness has been removed. But I am wild, my God is wild. I do not belong here. Pele is life, Pele is art. I hear her roaring through Berkeley. I smell her burning San Francisco. I feel her fucking California into The Earthquake. In exile I understand that to die here will be to die. While on her chest in the islands there is only life emptying into life.

Norman Hindley

BREATH MINT

The heel of one shoe giving way, The smell of steam left in my pressed blouse Embarrassed me. The noise of plants breaking, His hand on my neck and behind. Him on me. The comfort of crushed oregano Under my face. Spread open My stomach filled with cold loam . His weight. And then again. Until he failed. I knew for an hour he'd kill me, That I'd die in the hands of one With a mint in his mouth. There's skin, Hairs, blood of his in black layers Under my nails. Just a few feet from the street And not dark yet. No listeners. Such timing. He wouldn 't clean me Or put the combs back in my hair. He eased me into a pond And with no sound towed me out, Pinned me to the bottom with a flywheel. The last of my heat went rising Like tremulous light And that first night The absolute zero of loss that won't subside Set in. I see the stars and all the skies Distorted and dim drag on. And now A bass lives in my skirt, what a sight Mirrors back from his black eyes. I long so for touch, random sound, Look forward to the late fall When ice like mica forms And winter when it thickens, checks and sighs. And boys playing hockey Sail over me, breaths trailing like gauze.

I miss my legs, thighs full-blown, Warm as loaves, pints of lovely blood in them . At night there are lights, music, Above my head couples skate arabesques Into the ice, kiss, And I wish for lips, my mouth sweet, Red again as a grape, For someone to be with who'll notice My smooth immaculate feet, With hands cover the gentle points of hips I'm so conscious of, Read to me and when finished Bear me upward, prepare what remains. Put me decently away. The mint of his mouth Finally gone from my hair.

BLACK SHOES FOR THE DANCE

Years of mopping piss in the bathroom, The seat always left up, Bits of whisker, nose hair in your Night of Olay. His morning cigarette extinguished in the eggs. Tons of cold dinner. Cockhairs in the tub. Home late from the bars, driving drunk. Worry eating your hands. Home to fuck the cow He announces. Years of this. The ribbing he gives About your sad, thickening feet, Behind spreading a bit in your dress. A varicosity on your calf. Eye make-up A little overdone, he points to it. All the friends are his. He's critical Of how you eat. Buys you black shoes that button. He's never wrong. You know all about His low, tightly wrapped body. The cheeks Of his ass like boiled eggs. He's fit, will outlive you. You sand his touch off your skin With sea salt And a rough stone. This, the husband you chose. So don't whine to sister, Or hairdresser. Kill this bastard. Commitment, confidence are vital. Friday's good. Catch him leaning, Sorting through the big chest-freezer For Saturday's chops. Put an open hand Under his crack, lift, tip him in. Leap On the lid turn the key. He Has 10 to 12 minutes of air. He'll think It's a sport, acknowledge you've won,

Beg you by name. Don't budge. Say nothing. Panic is about to catch in his throat Like a ham hock. Back braced Against the chest bottom his feet will beat Hell out of the lid. Hold your position. Winded, he'll quit. And here, your desire known, He'll threated you with capture, The gas chamber. You don't think about punishment, But how dark it is Under the lid, his breath, Black as your shoes, settling On the chickens and fish Like soot. How in the morning you let in the light, Test by pressing his eyes in Like thumbtacks, His flat stomach white as a halibut's, Mouth trimmed with snow. But the air continually thins, slips away. He Gathers for the final volley, Kicking and rocking the freezer. When he finds himself going He weeps, Your name runs out of his eyes, Over and over in rivers, Apologize, Apologize, Cannot rise without air, You can't hear it, And like any dead he drifts, Cold, dreamless down the night.

LANDLADY

Old blond kiss, insomniac, Sister of grief, Consider me, your boarder, my sleep, Before you sit, lift the lid. The grand Yamaha Gleams waxed as a limousine, A coffin of wrong chords That rumble the hardwood floors when you play, Wakes me halls away. And above it The singing, keyless, malarial, A voice that could trim a hedge. That finished you run to odd jobs. The percussion of heels through the house As you adjust for the turns, slipping, Your head caroms off the wall but You never go down. You rehearse walking In spikes for Sundays, the hall by my room your runway. I think murder. 3 a.m. my third night And you're knocking, I hardly know you but, Could I possibly come out and Shoot the horse, down two days With a stroke. Surrounded with flashlight s And lanterns, the French would eat it, It's a U.F.O. in the barn. There are signs of prayer And you've cleaned her. We'll push the body into the gulch With the jeep. Your plan. Nixed. A backhoe digs a hole In the morning, the mare's rolled in, shot, covered. You make a grave border with peanut plants. Landlady, you also encourage the tortoise, your pal, A 25 pound reptile, Who can snap a crowbar in half with his beak, To breed with your foot When you sit for tea.

And this is progress Compared to what passed when your husband left After 30 years, began another family two doors down. You came unhooked, sat in the squash garden Missing two days. The hospital, the restraints. You wore the gaudy wall-hanging of Christ Through town like a trenchcoat. Lived on vodka, sardines and ativan. Spent thousands On cosmetic surgery, hairdos, red underwear. Father Bob visited, Spoke on the ecstasy of repentance, Joys of celibacy. Celibacy stinks you said. And you began getting out Doing manual labor. Dug post holes, Ran fence. Put a half acre in roses, Got some hogs. Learned to weld, plumb, Roofed the bunkhouse. Burned the bastard's boat he'd left. Ate right. Dated. Rented rooms for income and company. Person of dignity and heart You 've mastered most of your emptiness, Checked sadness. But old blond kiss There's still the insomnia, And you are undeniably odd, Please consider me, my sleep, Tonight , before you begin.

Ben Adres

TAKING ADVICE

but some nights I'm sick of your logic; no matter how I try to ignore it flick off the lights, that nagging whine still pricks away at me like a plague of mosquitoes. Lead me past the edge of town where I can plunge into an oily harbor for redemption, join the old sailors and fishermen in their dive who swarm in dark corners or hunch like herons under a blue neon, taking my pick of the lure. You who swear by your holy bookkeepers and their God, I'll spend three lifetimes, a pound for every ounce, before clearing the gates of purgatory; Milton, I say it's better to be served here than to wait in hell. All the gypsies of the waters promise to reveal to me by next moon, the sunken treasures of Panama.

I got it in Kalapana. We buried Makule, drove back. She worried about her boyfriend, Thought she'd seen him horseback in Pahoa With another woman. We walked through pastures At dusk in the shadow of new lava . Her home was by the water trough , a feed shed. I hadn 't slept in two days. My nose blocked, mosquito net pressed A dark mesh to my face, my lungs Emptied and I wanted to shriek But she had gone beyond this darkness, Put him next to her mother, Two urns in a glass case in Hilo, Single gunshot, years that wove an invisible quilt. It was done. In the morning we walked to his house. Tin roof, koa, curly ohia. I searched the closet for his rifles, Found the shirt. These threads are what you've kept of me. I wonder what to wear.

Dean H . 1ionma

C-NOTE

Dear Richard I have conceived the perfect scam. We can arrange it this summer, it's easy money, a quick rake, we'll hit Brazil and live like kings. We'll start at Volcano, the package tour, airfare not included . POETRY AND SELF-AWARENESS, take ads in travel mags, the complete method of fulfillment. We'll display your degree, fake mine, polish up on EST notes, Freud and joyce Brothers, hand out paper and pencil, profess the confessional, the dirty secrets, force a few tears and hold hands. We should finish by lunch, take up on cocktails, a road tour, or meditation time. Get them loose, Richard, loving, drunk with trust, a group scene, let 'em fuck each other, it always works. At night we'll go over each poem , draw connections and build character, more cocktails, then bed. We'll feed 'em cheap food, something simple, soulfully sincere, rent a van or two,

a survival hike and beach verse, I tell you it's no sweat. We 'll book 'em solid, a three grand package, prey on weakness and fat pockets, the sweet con, make our million and bail.

We'll dump our women and change names, take some villa in Rio, cruise the hot clubs and play fat on the high rolling tables, Pina Coladas from a veranda overlooking Sugarloaf, I tell you, we can do it.

You must not hesitate, Richard, or discuss this with anyone. We may face detractors, crucifixion, or death. Understand that this is not a game, that one cannot afford chances with martyrdom , exile, or cash. Plan your summer accordingly, and save your good byes for the bank. Awaiting your acknowledgement as always, Dean

Dean H. Honma

THE ABANDONMENT OF WILD PIGS

I. Volcano In 62 we kids would go back through the ferns in my cousin's watch the first one I ever saw. He'd found it near the lettuce field, small lost, and raised it in a pen behind the shacks. An easy 200 lbs., we'd with her, stroke the hard, black bristles, hand-feed the ohelo berries picked in the forest. He killed the pig a few months later for his brot wedding, burning her deep in the ground.

II. The Kill Mauna Kea, the southeast slope. We follow the dogs up past the macadamia orchards, ferns thick as ropes. They take the scent, lead us further up the mountain toward a deep gulley. Near the top, boars run parallel to the hillside, quick, short steps of fear. I chase down the incline, cutting an angle, closing the distance. At thirty brace the .270, squeeze out three rounds and the lead boar falls, legs from under him like thin wire, sprawling headfirst like a drunk. The are anxious, sniffing, licking the heat, first taste of blood . The pig indifferently, two holes like half-dollars, no questions, a clean kill. III. Stories Through the Saddle, the four-wheel bites deep, moves on in Fifty miles of lava road, three of us waking to each gnarl, each groove Larry does not care to avoid. The pig crosses the hi-beams, eyes like marble, stunned solid in its track. A large sow. Larry brakes as he, and Alfredo pull long-edged skinning knives from their belts, the pig into the surprise of light. Alfredo charges, his knife held high, the true and clean . The pig bolts, attempts escape, Alfredo laying her out Larry and Everett bury their blades up under the throat. It is over, a of seconds. Thick redness stains their hands, blankets the cold black We pack the sow into the Cruiser, dressed in minutes, and move on Kohala. I do not sleep, the carcass still warm, still breathing, the I night.

. No More, No Less March, this year. No gun, I return , look hard for s igns of pig near plum in the back acres, in macadamia groves off Kau , and the upper trails of Volcano, hoping for that one glimpse of primitive animal , the dark sharp路skinned beast that comes near at night , digging fern s in the yard, damp s mell at da wn close to the hou se. Food and chunks of tras h are outside, watched and listened to, but only the sound of whispered steps, heartbeats in the dark. The pigs are here, know I am back, w ild hate in long silence.

Sherri Szeman

CUTTHROAT: A PLAYER WHO PLAYS FOR HIMSELF (for auschwitz 1944)

no one is capable of understanding you who is not capable of doing the same . .. himself pablo picasso

in hazy cattle cars gold triangles glimmer atop gold triangles. shadowed heads sway in the tracks' rhythm. a girl drifts asleep, dreams thick winter soup. a boy knocks over the stench-bucket. raw hands cover cursing mouths. she leans her head against the boards. steam screeches. wood slides on wood. ein zwei. one in blue-grey barks at her bluer eyes. no. I only dream the german officer coming over, the women against a wall, his boots gleaming in red clay, his baton butting cold against my jaw, his sie sind aile huren, the mud gasping as he strides away. it must be a dream I feel nothing. I lie. it is not even a nightmare. I have learned an escape. when they go to the showers scream this one your brother that one your

child. soldiers will point guns. do not see. weep. beg. they will snarl toller jude. pretend you are. march. grab anything wearing swastika. one finds a way out. the german officer keeps her a special place. gives her cognac champagne caviare. she says nothing when he grunts over her. he does not mind her stillness. he falls asleep. afterward she walks anywhere she pleases. they will not speak to her. some spit. soldiers call to her but she only knows german in dreams. she used to dream of grassy fields towering sunflowers jan's calloused hands rough lips. now dreams dark bread potatoes bits of greasy butter his face his panting sweating weight. it is not so difficult. so painful. any time it could end. choose a day to caress the woven steel. that will do. or the guards in the towers will call to you. do not turn. or they will say nothing. you will feel their indulgence. or the dogs will run to meet you. the way does not matter. there is no nightmare worse than our waking.

'路'

Ian MacMillan from PROUD MONSTER: SKETCHES

WESTERN POLAND, SPRING, 1941- Sisters Magda Iwanska looks out through the little bedroom window at dusty road leading into the village center, while her eight year old Sofia stares thoughtfully at her back. "May I?" Sofia asks. Magda shakes her head. It is morning, and the Germans are gone. They executed men the day before, reprisal for the death of a soldier found in a dry well .at the edge of the village. It seems strange to Magda that, when she was she dropped a doll down that well, and she cannot drive from her mind image of the soldier lying on it. She is now fourteen, and feels uneasy a going to her grandmother's house, because her uncle is lying in state waiting to be taken to the cemetery. She has never seen a dead man "I knew it when you wouldn't take baths with me any more," Sofia "May I, please?" "No, stop it. We have to go. Mother and Father expect us now. " "Just once?" "No, I told you!" Sofia walks away, her face gone red with bitterness. Magda wa her, then says, "Listen, we have to go now. I'll - I'll show you later." "I want to see now." Magda sighs with exasperation. "All right." She raises her urn'"'"'" smock up to her shoulders. Sofia stares at them, the full, rounded breasts with the brown nipples, each with little golden hairs around the edges. She draws in her breath with a long gasp. "They're bigger even than my fist!" she whispers. " Look, has a little mole!" Magda lets the smock fall. "Wait, can I touch one?" "No! What are you thinking?" Magda snatches her shawl off the bed and walks toward the front door, her little sister following. Walking behind her sister through the village, Sofia watches the heels appear and disappear from under the smock floating just inches above t ground. She puts her hand inside her coat and feel s her skinny chest. It's like a washboard- not even a ripple of fat. She wonders if she will be able grow breasts like that, big rounded conical mountain s with hard brown nipples - the most forward part of her body. She runs ahead three quick

steps so that she ca n see Magda's chest in profile. Magda is looking to her right, at the church graveyard. " Look at that," she says. Sofia looks. Men are pulling up the rusted iron fence at the back of it. "They have to make the graveyard bigger." Sofia nudges her sister. " You know, I already saw them anyway. I peeked while you were sleeping. I just wanted to see while you were standing up." But Magda isn't listening. They are nearing their grandmother 's house. Inside, their parents a nd aunts and uncles are drinking wine and talking in low, hushed tones. Their mother rushes to them, her face red from crying but twisted in anger. "Where have you been?" she whispers harshly. " The ser vice is about to begin! " " We forgot," Magda says. " You forgot! My Lord , what were you thinking? Now go, pay your respects!" Magda approaches the coffin with Sofia behind her, looks inside, and then goes to join her mother. Sofia approaches, looking down at the flat, fores hortened front of her body, and bangs the point of her hip on the lower corner of the coffin . The pain shoots through her like a flash of heat , and she forgets herself and let s out a sharp scream. They all look at her, and she stares at the floor. "I - I hit my hip. I only hit my - " They turn away. Embarrassed , she looks into the box. He is dressed in his church clothes and his face is a pale greyish white. Something is wrong with his forehead. They pu t something in place of it. Plaster. The huge, battered hands with the short black hairs on the fingers are folded carefully with each finger crossing another one. There is a s mell , sweet but turned, like bad fruit. The lips are tight, crisscrossed with minute creases. When she studies the closed a nd puffed eyes she feels a strange dizziness run through her , and feels as if she is not standing on anything. She runs from the house. Magda finds her behind the chicken coop. " What's the matter?" she asks softly. "What's the matter?" "Was that really him? Was he really dead?" "Yes, the Germans shot him yesterday." "Why?"

NEAR POZNAN, 'POLAND, WINTER, 1941- Father and Son My cousin Jacek Kiel , a magistrate and militia volunteer during the roundup of the Jews, had a passion for watches. At first he considered the solution to theJewish ques tion immoral, and he had many friends who were Jews. But German authority could not be disobeyed. Jacek found that because of his official pos ition facilitating the deportations in our region, he could greatly increase his collection by selectively taking some of the fine watches possessed by the Jews. He became a vigorous worker in the deportations, and ended up with a huge collection. He was in effect risking his life for these watches, since theoretically he was stealing from the Third Reich. I happened to be in his house when the two SS officers and the guard broke in the front door. Paying no attention to me because of my youth and my somewhat dull appearance, they began slapping Jacek Kiel around, yelling in high pitched voices that he was a thief, an enemy of the German people. They began pulling drawers out of the cupboard and dumping little mounds of gold and silver watches on the floor while he looked on, wincing each time he heard a crystal break . He began to whimper, reaching down and picking up one particular watch. "Look at this!" he gasped , "how can you destroy something t;O beautiful?" They looked - it was a tiny gold watch s u spended in a sphere of glass. " Take it,"he said. " My gift to youwe'll. return these others with the promise that it will never happen again!" One officer held the sphere of glass with the watch in it close to his face and examined how the little gold posts leading out to tiny keys in the back seemed to be suspended in very clear water, and as he turned it, the mechanis m changed s hape with a liquid , melting undulation . "Paris," he whispered. Jacek Kiel's father had been an extremely handsome man. The second SS officer saw his enlarged photograph on the wall, s natched it off its nail, turned it over and took out a large quilled pen. "We are going to make an example of you , criminal," he said, preparing to write something on the brown paper sealing the back from dust. The other officer cleared his throat and asked for the pen. Understanding his intent, the first one gave it to him , and he proceeded to write, "I am a criminal who has s tolen from the German people." He wrote this in such a perfectly symmetrical and artistically beautiful script that even the man to be hanged seemed mesmerized by it. We all watched that line flow out of the tip of the pen, beginning with the large, florid " I," and I noted the look of rigid , almost furiou s concentration on the face of the SS officer.

My cousin swung under the branch of a tree, gently turning in the wind, with the picture hanging in reverse from his strangled neck. He stopped swinging when the rope froze, and stayed there throughout the early part of winter, when some townsman took the risk and cut him down, so that his body lay waiting to be claimed with the rope sticking out from behind his head, suspended vertically like a meter-long stick above the brittle snow. Few of the people remembered]acek's father in his youth; his appearance had been almost a legend for years. When my cousin was swinging before that unidentified person cut him down , the townspeople used to go to the frozen form with the snow and ice caked in the corners of the mouth and eyes, and furtively turn the picture over on his chest. Then they would stare for long periods of time at the extraordinarily handsome face of the hanged man's father.

NEAR SMOLENSK, LATE WINTER, 1942- Philosophers Privates Heiberling and Wirtki huddle under the thin woolen blanket, suspended at head level and draped over their helmets, out of the caustic and tortuous wind. Their shelter is built in an icy ditch framed by two frozen corpses bridging the banks. One body is that of their commanding officer, the other of a young private from Hamburg. Both men frequently lapse toward that sleepy half consciousness they know is the mindlulling gateway to death, and must prod each other awake. Heiberling has an advantage- he is kept awake by a sharp pain in his knee, injured when he fell on the dead officer and with the full force of his weight hit the knee on a stone hard buttock. He is afraid that the cap is cracked. With awkward and labored speech, using lips that refuse to obey the mind's order, Heiberling says, " I must keep moving my toes. I must concentrate on my feet." He pauses, moving his legs. In this cold, movement of any kind is agonizing a nd permits the cold to seep with vicious insinuation through their clothes. " Anyway," Heiberling says, "the meaning of all this becomes clear. Nations are like single persons. Composites of all the possibilities of personality." The tent fogs with his breath. He looks up at the bright points of light in the blanket - holes through which light shines with a violent brilliance. " We contribute to one part of its personality," Heiberling continues. " But we must bear the consequences of all those other features, the demonic aspects." He pauses, looking at Wirtki. "What do you think?" "My mind is too numb for philosophy." In the ensuing silence Heiberling looks up at the dim form of his commanding officer's frozen .thigh. Wirtki clears his throat , shaking himself from his frigid s tupor. " We haven't a chance. We're dead." Heiberling shakes himself, moving his limbs to test their feeling. " Someone will find us. The Russians are as closed out as we. No danger. Besides, visualizing the deeper meaning of all this keeps me awake." " I am visualizing my death," Wirtki says. " I visualize a world without me. I see now that the progression of events I would be responsible for will now not happen. The world will be inevitably different. My wife marries someone else, his genes follow into the future rather than mine. Do you see?" "That is an interesting thought. But you are not married ." "I am s peaking of the woman who would be my wife. I have had only one woman, and only once."

This surprised Heiberling, who has had no women at all. But he decides against mentioning this. "I see no grief," Wirtki says, "just the simple fact that Paul Wirtki was but now is not. He had memory, his own little infinity of experiences, his unique character like none other on the planet, a face which once known could be distinguished from all others on the planet. I see a world without that. A world devoid of me." "Yes, an interesting thought," Heiberling says. "But have you no room for optimism?" "No." Heiberling shakes himself, looking at the dim profile of his friend with the blanket draped over his helmet, next to the young soldier's frozen legs. "The fact that people remember me is irrelevant," Wirtki says. "I can remember people too, but not their secret minds ." "Yes." "That dies with me. I see a world without that mind." His head sags on his knees. Then, in a muffled voice, he says, "This mobile package of flesh no longer exists." Later as the wind howls above them and the points of light in the blanket die out, there is a period of sleep. Perhaps it is night , but Heiberling's pain wakes him up once more. He cannot feel anything from the injured knee down to his feet. Soon he realizes that the subtle radiation of warmth from Wirtki is no longer there, has fled upward into the bleak Russian sky. Putting his head in his hands, Heiberling understands that he js alone. He pauses, looks up. "I've been thinking," he says, "we describe death as a condition- it's not. Only life is a condition. Technically there is no death." He stops, thinks, and then says, " A corpse is inert matter, like a pile of stones." He sighs with fatigue , wondering how long it will take him to die. "You know , I have had no women, I have had none at all. But after all , I am only nineteen ."

NEAR MOSCOW, WINTER, 1943- "Then time slowed-" "And so Pashkov rose and said to us, 'The Germans are butchers children. You will see how Mitka Pashkov treats the butchers of children.' It had only been hours since the poor fellow had learned the news about his family. He picked up his automatic and left." In the firelight Korilov's thick eyebrows cast heavy shadows upward on his forehead. It was nearly dawn, and soon the men would rise to engage the Germans again. Kliment Tolev felt a dizzy swoon leak through his body. His influenza made his head reel, and he had a fever, numbing the poisonous fear that had burdened him weeks. Behind them a short distance away rose the hulking shapes destroyed German tanks, yesterday's victory, and now the snow had covered the frozen bodies and the lumps of shattered equipment left 路 "Tolev," Korilov said, "you are only a boy and cannot know the rage feels at the loss of one's children." " I understand," Tolev said with a trembling sigh, " please, go on. I'll it easy to identify with my father when , I mean if I'm killed." The men looked at each other, and Korilev nodded his head slowly. " Pashkov advanced upright toward the German positions," he went on. "I tell you this is true. Five or six of us saw this , and confirmed it each to other. " The men leaned into the fire, interested. "The battle was 路 -bullets flew above our heads, but Pashkov seemed not to be hit, far ahead of us as he was . He would be gone in the smoke, and then we'd see him again, the automatic at his side, firing at the Germans." Korilov paused, amazed at what he was about to say. "The bullets were ripping through his body- we could see his very flesh being left in chunks behind him on the snow, but he fought on, frightening many Germans into a retreat and killing those who thought he could be stopped." Korilov moved the end of a branch into the embers, shaking his head. "At the end of this engagement someone brought out Vodka and he drank, and then did that same Vodka leak like pure water from his bloody wounds. There were no eyes in the sockets of his head, only little blue flames , and he picked up his automatic and advanced again, raising us from our exhaustion to follow him ." " Was he killed?" Tolev asked. "I mean , how could a man-" " I was coming to that. It was as if this one man, who had lost his children to the butchers, were responsible for a general rout . Listen, we are practical men and could discount this as nonsense, but for the fact that we saw it. He marched- it was smoky and loud, and then all of a sudden, time slowed. We could see the very bullets soaring through the air, we could see Pashkov standing there being virtually eviscerated in slow motion, so that

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organs and strips of flesh flew out behind him, so that chunks of bone a nd hair from his head flipped back at us. But he advanced onward , right into the front door of a building, killing all w ho faced him . Later , when we secured our new position, we looked for him there, but he had vanis hed without a trace. All we could find were small organs a nd bit s of frozen flesh , scraps of his uniform , a couple of teeth ." Korilov leaned back . " It is believed that he s till exis ts , however , because we could not find his gun. He is w ith us, out there somewhere. " Dawn . Korilov s ighed and looked at the men , w ho s tudied the ember s in the dying fire. There were a couple of gla nces of fa tigued skepticism, a thoughtful cough. "How ma ny children did he lose?" T olev a sked. " Two, but one cannot put a figure on that. His vengeance is great. " T olev rose unsteadily a nd wander ed off toward the Ger ma n ta nks. He had to urinate, and decided to do something he h ad seen other men do, urinate on the corpse of a butcher of children. Alone a mong t he ta nks and bodies, T olev felt a s limy chill r un through him . Because of his fatigue he went on with his original pla n , although the idea seemed somehow strange to him . He urinated on the s nowcovered s ha pe of one of the corpses. As he did so the snow melted , revealing to him a partly open hand , with t wo fingers pointing in a west ward direction. He finis hed, staring at the h and , and was suddenly frightened , as if t he s trea m of urine had for a moment been a kind of conduit of death , something like an electrical w ire with current in it , and he turned and went back toward the fire, under standing that he had made a fa tal error , that now he would almost certa inly be killed, unless some secr et and providential condition might a ssis t him past this accidental blasphemy. No, that was it, death ha d run upstream into his body a nd he carried it in his s tomach . He shuddered miserably and felt lonely and deeply afra id , a nd s uddenly very tiny and insignificant in the huge silence. All th at told him he was alive still was his discomfor t and the s ight of the fire the men were building u p for breakfast. With that a nother idea came to him, that t here was a lways the possibility of protection from that riddled ma n who had lost his children.

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NEAR PINSK, SUMMER, 1944- The Beast of the Marshes We had come to u se the name "The Beast oft he Marshes" in reference to a deranged partisan who became so effective in his assaults against us that for a while, we eas ily lapsed into the secret conviction that this one man was the principal objective of our war. No matter how extensive the reprisals against the civilian population- women and children hanging by their necks from crude jibbets - he struck again and again, each time in a manner more frightfully perverse than the last. The partisan 's calling card was a single tooth, always in perfect condition, sometimes with gold fillings intact. He would tie the tooth into the knot binding string around one kind of box or another containing the proof of his hideou s deeds. And he would always place the box in a location suggesting the hopeless vulnerability of our defenses. Once Standartenfuhrer Haupt found at the doorstep of his billets an ornate box of the type women keep silver brushes in. The tooth sat wound inside the knot holding the box closed. Inside the box lying on thick blue velvet he found six strips of dark flesh which a young former medical student identified as lips. Six lips. This discover y corresponded with information that a number of our guards had disappeared within the previous two days. We kicked stools and blocks of wood out from under the feet of fifteen peasants that day , but the message was apparently unconvincing, for on the next day Standartenfuhrer Haupt found a hat box on the billets doorstep, and before he opened it h e could feel the contents shifting from one side to the other in a slow and noiseless change of weight distribution. Inside were the genitals of four men. Perhaps most horrible of all was the problem of numbers. Six lips meant three men, but here we had proof of four victims. Standartenfuhrer Haupt looked out over the flat expanse at the edge of the huge, forbidding Pripet Marshes, and informed us that under the circumstances no reprisals would be carried out this day. We were all aware of the seeming inevitability of the barbaric wave of t'h e Bolshevik assault pushing us back month by month, but at night, nothing could compare with the obsessive, mystifying subject of the Beast of the Mars hes. We went to bed always wondering if we were next, and what brutality, what frightful mutilation lay in store for any of u s who took the wrong step? He became for us the symbol of life's cruel unpredictability. From the beast none of us was safe. Hiding out t here in the soggy marsh, he had in hi s pocket the razor or knife meant specifically for delicate but essential body parts: eyelids, fingers, tongues. " Infants!" Haupt shrieked one day, after we received our latest gift: the very absurdity of the beast's new counteroffensive seemed to require

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extraordinar y measures. Our medical student ident ified the contents of t he box as kneecaps, five of t hem. Why t he odd num ber? Why for t hat matter kneeca ps? In this case we found the bod ies of the three soldier s not more than a kilometer in to the mar s h , all s hot in th e face, a long with the muti lation of their k nees. In a ny case Haupt was ash en w ith fright a nd rage. " We w ill need six infa nts!" This duty was the most d ifficult I ever perfor med. j ohann Dukas, a good friend of mine, was driven nearl y out of his mi nd by it. When we had fi nis hed our gr uesome reprisal, he fou nd a single golden hair on his bl ack t unic, and, holding it up to the blazing Russian s un , he burst into tear s, now one w ith the mothers of the tin y children w ho were swinging in a line under the long portable gallows. In time we began to see our own hagga rd t roops emerging from the mars h , having transpor ted t heir materiel on wooden r ails built for t he purpose of get ting the heavy equi pment across the t reacherous terrain. They too had stor ies: a piece of wire in a circle passed t hrough the eyeballs of men lost, the tooth at t he juncture, a small box of toes, and everyw here the r ich s tink of car rion. And repr isals? We ha d run out of peasants, it seemed. Wi th tea rs in hi s eyes, St andartenfuhrer Ha upt read ou t t he lis t of the missing and s urely dead by the h and of the mons ter . He then looked at us and said , " Gentlemen . war breeds the most unna tural of creatures. We have been victims of one of t hem. This beast is huma n , yes, but t he degree of his bestiality has proven to us the bar baric potential in the soul of men . I suppose we will never catch h im , a nd it is per haps proper that this s hould be so. He t herefore remains the enigmatic symbol of t he cruel inhuma nity we have t ried to contravene." Our retreat bega n s hortl y a fter this day. Either on foot or in the s low , heavy t rucks, I am s ure t hat man y of us confused t he reasons for our massive flight. It was as if ou r escape were not from t he Russians bu t rather from that m ysterious horror residi ng in the char ac ter of one person hidden in t he swamp, t he Beast of t he Marshes.

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MAUl THE DEMIGOD Steven Goldsberry Illustrated by Dietrich Varez Simon and Schuster, 1984

" I hate this story." That is Maui's spontaneous reaction to a parable in praise of patience, order, and appropriately bestowed rewards. And he is quick to explain: "Because it is a story of contrivance. It is meant to teach a lesson." Steven Goldsberry's "epic novel of mythical Hawai'i" respects Maui's distaste for preaching and for contrivances. It is, instead, a book of flexible plentitude, a book that is filled with ~toried imagination weaving around a world where wonder and preciseness meet and enrich each other. And since stories explain best, here is an episode from another story, told by Maui's grandfather about a chief of the island of Hawai'i, a son of Pele who had found a huge basalt slab which he took to be the heart of the island and meant to dedicate to his mother the volcano goddess. Opele and his retainers carried the slab through the 'ohi'a lehua and tree-fern forests of Mauna Loa toward the crater at Kilauea, Pele's home. The journey seemed endless. Two men died on the way, when their bodies lost their own weight into the stone. You know how, when you carry something heavy, you feel lighter afterward. Some of your weight has gone into the object. It takes time for you to regain your weight and feel heavy once more. These two men, who were walking at the front and back of the slab, lost so much of their weight that they became light as chicken down, light as clouds. A stiff wind swept through the 'ohi'a with a hiss, and the two men blew away. They blew over the tops of the trees and disappeared. The others found them days later, one after the other, dead, their bodies crumpled and black from having fallen out of the sky. Maui doesn 't hear this story, but it is one he wouldn 't have hated. There are also lessons in Chief Opele's adventure, as he finally dances himself to death on the burning crater floor, but they are lessons which scatter in all sorts of directions and which constantly suggest their own qualifications, new pathways, and other stories. Above all, they are informed with the kind of magical realism that makes us see the retainers fly through the 'ohi'a because we know such experiences about weight and lightness to be true. Robert Frost 's New England boy swings the birch forest in this manner,

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and he escapes the matter-of-factness of Truth becau se his swinging is just as true. Only better. Maui is of course the Polynesian trickster hero, and he is one of the most intriguing embodiments of this sprawling and ambivalent figure between man and god, between good and evil, between joyous assistance and callous brutality. Ma ui 's mythic relatives are found throughout the world, though probably nowhere as frequently as among the American Indians: Tric kster himself a mong the Winnebago, and his animal cousins Hare, Coyote, Fox, and Raven are only some of them . Then there are all the others , the African, Scythian , Finnis h trickster gods, Heracles and Odysseu s among the Greeks, Monkey in China, Loki and at times Odin himself in Norse mythology. In each case Trickster is a powerfully dis turbing, s tirring force, someone who upsets, overturns, shapes and res ha pes: he is the yeast in the lumpy dough of ma nkind. Good or evil are not the most relevant con siderations - action is. And since this is what we want and admire, but at the same time fear (for very good reasons) to admit in an unqualified way, we develop all sorts of ambiguous checks and balances. The Norse tricks ter god Loki, the leader of the demonic forces when the world is plunged into final destruction , is friend and companion to Odin and Thor even though both know what will happen in the end. And Satan is close enough to the Lord to propose a bet about]ob. In s uch ways myth formulates the ambivalent bond and leaves it at that. Religious or psychological explainers try for ordered explanations, a nd so they a rrive at patterns which convince only those who already have their own limiting patterns made out. Hence we can lis ten to all sorts of ingenious reasons why Satan had to be permitted to do what he did to Job, or why, as C.].Jung tells us, Trickster is a necessary step in the development toward t he differentiated, well-orga nized huma n community as we find it in oth er mythic cycles. Stories are better. They are better, tha t is, if they give us a sense of the infinite variety of things without squeezing us into a pattern of limited comfort. "That is what is so difficult about life," Maui's foster-fa t her, the sea god Ka na loa, tells hi m before he sends him back up to earth , "there are many answers and ma n wants only one." Stories such as the tale of the retainers losing their weight blend the pain and the joy, decay and life, in images of clarity and wonder. Clarity is essential h ere - and I s uspect it is the reason w hy most books which try for flexible openness either peter out or after all turn into dogmatic preaching. Only a writer w ho grounds himself in the t hingness of the world, and w ho let s himself be guided by the variety of what is without worrying too much what it all means, can let himself be carried to an open and yet coherent celebration of metamorphic life. Maui the Demigod is filled with places and their names , with plants a nd with a nimals, with precise' Wa:ys of eating, of loving, of fis hing, s urfing, killing. We may choose passages at random , and we will cons tantly find

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precise actions precisely described, whether Maui twines girls into figures as a prelude to lovemaking, escapes in hawk shape from the roots his vengeful grandmother slings after him, or prepares an earth oven as part of the burial rites. A joyous, intimate respect for nature and activity shows itself in the care for the words with which the crafts seeing and doing are described. Of course Steven Goldsberry's Maui is the hero of the legendary stories familiar to everyone who knows anything about the Polynesian Maui. The novel's action radiates around Hana, where the family of Goldsberry's hero rules, and it branches out from there as it traces Maui's adventures. In his youth Maui separates Wakea the skygod from Papa the earthgoddess so that people aren't trapped in darkness again. And he s nares the sun in Haleakala to make him move more slowly. He also drives people into madness and death for the sheer fun of it, and his behavior toward his family varies from affection to contempt. Nothing, finally, is settled about him except his intensity of life- and the joy of it, which in the end kills him. It is quite literally his Achilles heel, though in a wonderfully comic way, which stirs the goddess of death against him. Incidental details stay with us as vividly as t he great stories. For some of the most memorable ones Dietrich Varez' vital blockprints become powerful memory aids. It is a particular joy to see Varez' art work in the two most splendid recent celebrations of Hawai'i's living past in book form- first in Mary Kawena Pukui's '0/elo No'eau. Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings (Bishop Museum Press, 1983) and now in Goldsberry's Maui. Though it is regrettable that the publisher could not accommodate Varez' familiar rich brown tones in the print reproductions for Maui, the sixteen full-page illustrations together with the two delicate recurrent section vignettes greatly contribute to the reader's aesthetic pleasure. I myself prefer Varez' vigorous celebrations of Maui's erotic playfulness to some of the overly iconic prints, where Maui resembles a triumphant sumo wrestler. But this is a matter of taste. Like Goldsberry, Varez cherishes the good craftsman's bold precision and his joy for delicate detail ; echoes of oriental pattern designs add an intriguing dimension to these recent works. Though I have admired Varez' graphics for some years, it took me until now , when I looked a good number of times at his sequences in Matti and 'Olelo No'eau, that I realized h ow much my liking has to do with something that is a bsent in his work, yet something all too obtrusi vely present in much good blockprint a rt of this century: In his major print sequences and themes Varez does not preach; like Golds berry's Maui, Varez' prints are the thing itself. They do not n eed a s upportive message behind them, but they define and carry their ow n weight. And herewith they affirm the essential and authentic joys of doing, of life. Words and images therefore complement each other most fittingly.

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Maui is a comic novel in the most basic and essential way; it is a book about life, and despite the inescapability of death it constantly affirms li fe. This does not mean that Maui is a nice book, or that Maui is a nice person. Much of what happens, from the very beginning, is extraordinarily gruesome, and Goldsberry's descriptions don't spare the reader . Maui is arrogant , overbearing toward member s of his class and for the most part oblivious of commoners. He uses and frequently abuses whatever s uits him - t he jawbone of his one grandmother a nd the pubic hair of the other one become his tools, and the former is certainl y not given voluntarily. Yet Maui also uses and engages himself with t he same vigor with which he forces others; he is full of wonder a nd curiosity, and he lives his destiny with a sense of community and action that a ltogether is profoundly right. I won't try to divide Maui into various sequences of heroic quests a nd the like; this is n 't what makes a good book, though it may help tie together the scaffolding. Golds berry's book ranges well beyond t he schoolmasterly mythic tales which have had their spectacular recent s uccesses as books or films . For one, it lacks their comfortably sentimental predictability, where imaginative episodes are just so many raisins in the wholesome porridge. Goldsberry ta kes the ri s k to s ubmit himself to the vagaries of his imagination and to trust the world and the story. He has seen , read, and thought a lot about w hat he tells, but he is a lso willing to let go of predetermined controls. Ther efore I think it is not pushing matters too far w hen I s uggest that Matti the Demigod may be one of those ra re works infused with the genuine Rabelaisian spirit of an overflowi ng, minutely precise yet abundantly general vision of an all-encompassi ng comic uni verse. It may be easy to s ummarize it in t hree sentences, but it is imposs ible to do it just ice w ithout an immense amoun t of detail; it misforms itself into grotesques and outrages, and it always returns to a bas ic sense of life; it turns a small segment of the world into a grand total ; it touches everything and it claims little or nothing in the end - except that life is good, and that celebration is joy. Therefore all sorts of moods can accommodate each other: Maui tell s of li ft ing the s ky , and haunti ng magic is set right next to t he backslappi ng guffaw of a travelling-salesma n story. But we have hardly time to think about this - there are so man y other tales to be li ved. T o say it one more time, it is the posit ive abundance of the world as reflected in these is lands that is Steven Goldsberry's greatest creation. For this reason I am reminded of the comic infinity of Rabelai s' Garganlua and Pantagruel, of Joyce, of Celine's Death on the Installment Plan , Grass' Tin Drum, As turias' Mula/a or Marquez' Hundred Years of Solitude.

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"In life we never get what we want," Maui complains to One of patient older friends . This is a truism for most of us, in life as well aa books. The beauty of Steven Goldsberry's Maui the Demigod is that it me forget such deficiencies for a while. Here we do get all we should

-Reinhard

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HO'IHO'I HOU: A TRIBUTE TO GEORGE HELM & KIMO MITCHELL Edited by Rodney Morales Bamboo Ridge Press, 1984

George Helm had been gone for over three years when I first heard Eric Chock speak him in a poem. Fresh from graduate school , I correctly identified "Poem for George Helm- Aloha Week 1980" as a pastoral elegy, with the necessary transformation of the lost friend into a nature spirit, and the customary passionate denunciation of the institutions in some abstract way responsible for the death. Milton, Shelley, Chock: everything in order. George Helm? A convenient symbol, and one I would watch for as I learned more about Hawaii. Quite obviously, though I admired the poem, I didn't know what Eric Chock was talking about. What I found out was inspiring and disturbingthat with Kimo Mitchell, George Helm had apparently disappeared in March of 1977, somewhere between Kahoolawe and Maui; that he was a Hawaiian activist, the center of the movement to end the bombing of Kahoolawe and to reclaim the island for Hawaiians; that he was a magnificent singer - I could hear this from his recordings. Most importantly, I not only learned, but soon felt, that George Helm was something few people ever become: an inspiration for many whose sorrow and love found its voice in word, song, picture, and action . Ho'iHo'i Hou : A Tribute to George Helm & Kimo Mitchell pays its respects by introducing the reader to the wide range of effects George Helm had, and continues to have, on Hawaii's writers, artists, and activists. Rodney Morales has gathered together poems, song lyrics, artwork, and personal tributes that all speak of the artists' sense of loss and gratitude. Morales also gives us poems and songs written about Kahoolawe, as well as essays that reveal how Helm's spirit moves today throughout the Hawaiian activist movement. Most ambitiously, Morales has given us Helm and Mitchell themselves, through two biographical essays, photographs, maps, and excerpts from Helm's own writing. The result is an important contribution, not only to Hawaii 's literary community, but to all who have been moved by the lives of George Helm and Kimo Mitchell. Most of the poetry and song lyrics blend together George Helm's roles as musician and social hero. Perhaps the best known,Jon Osorio's and Randy Borden's "Hawaiian Soul," tells of the voice that stilled all who heard, but ends with Helm as a wandering beacon , guiding those who follow. Malani

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Bilyeu's "Ballad of George Helm" calls on those who survive to take up Helm's mission, but begins with a tribute to the voice as well. The most comprehensive of the poems, Eric Chock's "Poem for George Helm- Aloha Week 1980," weaves Helm through the lines; he emerges again and again from the water that has taken him: So many of us are trying to get to the mountains, the beaches so many trying to swim in the waves legs kicking, arms paddling like the arms of George Helm stroking towards a familiar beach which he respected and belonged to by birth ... Other poems and lyrics set out the aspirations Helm became the living spokesman for. Alvin K. Isaacs Sr.'s "E Mau" sounds out the goals of Helm and the movement he led - "Strive," "Build," "Restore"; in fact, Isaacs foreshadows them; the song first appeared in 1941. Harry Kunihi Mitchell's 路 "Mele o Kahoolawe" celebrates the island, the "nine young men" who invaded it to save it, and the cause this' 'invasion" set into motion. At first, Joseph P. Balaz's poems seem out of place: no Helm, no sense of loss, no call to action. And yet, Balaz's deceptively simple lines come perhaps closest to touching the emotional center of Helm's life, whether in "Moe'uhane," where "I cannot go back" transforms itself into "I never left" through a series of briefly etched scenes, or in "Huaka'i," where sailing home becomes eternal, punctuated only by a storm that rages in vain: "we did not go down." Balaz's gentle writing melts away oppositions: "I" becomes "We," "You" becomes "Us" without any apparent effort or tension. He is an oddly moving, surprisingly optimistic poet, whose eyes stay open behind his shades. Three short prose tributes add important strokes to Helm's portrait. 'Ilima Pi'ianai'a reminds us of the important link George Helm forged between the older generation and the new movement he embodied: "He found his musical gift inspired through our elder musicians and composers ... and through their Hawai路ian Soul he came to understand the political awareness, the crying hurt and the unspoken dignity of the Hawaiians of the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's." OHA Trustee Walter Ritte, the person Helm went to Kahoolawe for the last time to help, highlights Helm's probing, highly inquisitive mind, which carried him into "libraries, museums, genealogies," as well as driving him "from island to island in search of the knowledge of our kupuna." Noa Emmett Aluli, spokesman for the Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana, fills in the past seven years with an account of progress, both political and cultural, "In the Spirit of George and Kimo." All three tributes insist that Helm's life has had its impact, and that the force of his example is still compelling. But Ho'iHo'i Hou sets itself a further task: to document the lives and

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early deaths of George Helm and Kimo Mitchell. This challenge is a daunting one for the biographer : most of the figures closest to the two men are still alive, man y of Helm 's actions are s till ha ving their effect, and the issues involved are highly controver s ial. Any account must therefore be provisional, but Morales s ucceeds in giving the reader unfamiliar with Helm and Mitchell a sense of why these two lives were so important. Morales goes about his tas k in two ways. First, two lengthy biographical essays order the facts into highly readable and inform ative narrati ves. Second, Morales gives us samples of Helm 's own writing - speeches , selections from notebooks, political documents, and so forth. In Helm's biography, Morales deals largely with the last two years of Helm 's life; the time of his most visible activism. Man y of the earlier details are fa scinating and s urpri s ing: mos t notably Hel m's short, high ly s uccessful bu siness career w ith Hawaiian Airlines. Morales' mos t difficult task is to describe the complicated events leading up to Helm 's and Mitchell 's deaths. Morales treads carefully here, presenting the ev idence, but leaving the readers to draw their own conclu sions about that las t night. Given the material available, he can do no more. Perhaps the most impressive section s of Ho'i Ho'i Hou are those that let George Helm s peak for himself. He had a writer 's feel for choosing the style mos t appropriate for his audience. " Personal Statement - Reasons for the Fourth Occupation of Ka hoolawe" is the work of a hig hl y contemplative, articulate , forceful writer; "Speech to the State House," delivered less than a month before hi s death, powerfull y conveys both his ri veting presence and his kee n sense of an a udience as indi viduals - Helm could s peak personally to hundreds. Morales thus tells the story of George Helm and Kimo Mitchell, but also lets them speak for t hemselves - as George Helm always did. This ant hology is a handsome tribute. The selections not only give us the portra its of two dedicated men , but also an in s ig ht into why George Helm a nd Kimo Mitchell ha ve ins pired poets, mus icians , artist s, a nd all who believe that Hawaii 's past mus t be a s haping part of its present a nd future. " Ho'iHo'i Hou " means "giving back , returning, restoring, restitution."' but thi s collection powerfull y s uggests , as Joe Ba laz would say. that "Hawai ian Sou l" never left.

A fin a l note: some oft he most touching pieces in this a nt hology are short poems and prose narratives about Kahoolawe written by Mau i schoolchildren. These were contributed by Way ne Kau mualii Westlake , who as a teacher in th e Poets-in -th e-Schools program in spired these children.

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Westlake's own recent work on the Big Island followed closely in the footsteps of George Helm, and his tragic death shortly before this collection appeared represents a great loss to Hawaii's literature. He will be missedand remembered.

- Craig Howes University of Hawaii

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Contributors' Notes

BEN AD RES was born in Honolulu. His poetry has appeared in HAPA , Bam boo Ridge, The Paper, The Little Magazine, and Ramrod. GEOLINE ABRAHAM is a student at the University of Hawaii. JOSEPH BALAZ was born and raised in Wahiawa and now lives in Punaluu. He is the editor of Ramrod, and has been published locally in Seaweeds and Constructions, Mana, Bamboo Ridge, HAPA , and Ho'iHo'i Hou: A Tribute to George Helm and K imo Mitchell. FRED 0. BAY SA was born and raised in Waialua and graduated from the University of Hawaii with an M.A. in English. ANNA DERBY HOWE BLACKWELL, in addition to her work in Hawaiian environmental education at Moanalua ( 1972-82 ), has a background in public relations and community service as well as in writing and editing, her current effort being the St. Andrew's Cathedral newsletter. She is also hard at work authenticating a novel written by a Mainland friend but set in Hawaii. Since writing this story wh ich, contrary to what the Department of Transportation may thin k, rep resents her first attempt at fiction in over 30 years, she has become the bride of LtC Jesse E. Blackwell, US Army (ret). THOMAS M. CASHMAN is a physician at Straub Clinic and wonders how William Carlos Williams ever did it. ERIC CHOCK is a local poet. KENN ETH ZAMORA DAMACION 's first book of poems wil l be published by W.W. Norto n in 1985. JIM DANIELS currently teaches at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. His poems have been published in Minnesota Review. Poetry East, Ohio Review, Kansas Quarterly and elsewhere. WILLIAM DANKS is a poet, playwright, novelist, but especially a screen writer. Two of his plays won first and second pl ace pri zes in the most recent Ku mu Kahua play writing co mpetition. REINHARD FRIEDERICH teaches literature at the University of Hawaii. GENE FRUMKIN, who makes his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is tea ching this year at th e University of Hawaii. His latest book of poems is Clouds and Red Earth from Swallow/Ohio University Press (1982).

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PETER GORHAM teaches physics at the University of Hawaii and was a co-winner in the American Academy of Poets contest. NORMAN HINDLEY's collection of poems, Winter Eel, was published in June 1984 by Petronium Press. DEAN HONMA is a student at the University of Hawaii. CRAIG HOWES teaches English at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is past President of the Hawaii Literary Arts Council. ARTHUR G. KIMBALL lives in Japan. GARY KISSICK, unable to find employment in Hawaii, lives in exile in West Germany with his wife and son. At present he is working on a collection of short stories and a novel set in Hawaii. The University of Hawaii Press published Outer Islands, a book of poems, in 1984. His poetry has appeared in Esquire, Poetry Now, Rolling Stone, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. Gary writes at all times for a Hawaiian audience. JULIET KONO lives and works in Honolulu. MITCHELL LESCARBEAU is a former faculty member of the University of Hawaii, now living in Massachusetts. JAROSLAV LISKA studies Art History and has an affinity with gypsies. PAT MATSUEDA is the editor of The Paper. IAN MACMILLAN teaches creative writing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His collection of short stories, Light and Power (University of Missouri Press), won the 1979 A.W.P. award for short fiction . The title of his work in this volume comes from Goya's Disasters of War: the second to last etching of a mythic animal lying on its side, a little avalanche of men coming from its mouth. Other excerpts from this book have appeared in six magazines including TriQuarterly, MSS, Carolina Quarterly, and have been reprinted in Pushcart Prize and Best American Short Stories anthologies. MICHAEL McPHERSON lives on Maui. ELISA MUI is a senior at Wellesley College majoring in English and Biology. She spent the spring of 1984 studying the traditional, formal patterns of poetry under the tutelage of Phyllis Thompson.

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LEONARD NATHAN's latest book, Holding Patterns, was published in 1982. His nnaâ&#x20AC;˘m._,_ have appeared in New England Review, Salmagundi, Image Magazine, Plainsong. DAVID P. PENHALLOW is currently working on a play, Sisters under the Skin. and Percy" is his first attempt in the short story form. LORETTA PETRIE teaches English at Chaminade University and has published and criticism in Bamboo Ridge, HAPA, Literary Arts Hawaii, The Paper, Aloha Honolulu. SCOTT ROEBEN is a humor-collecting dilettante and a senior at the University Hawaii at Manoa who will graduate in December and receive a B.A. in Li Studies - with concentration in writing, theater, and communications. Aside having written numerous pieces of serious and non-serious fiction, he has completed several (well, two) full-length plays, and has produced many unpublished articles including "Everybody Makes Generalizations" and " Waitresses - Women Behind Bars." SHERR I SZEMAN teaches English at the University of Cincinnati and is the Assi Poetry Editor of the Antioch Review (Antioch College; Yellow Springs, Ohio). KEOLANI TAITANO is graduating from the University Psychology and Russian. This is her first publication. REUBEN TAM of Kapaa, Kauai, has had poems printed in HAPA, The Paper, Ridge, Hawaii Review, and in Poetry Hawaii (University of Hawaii Press), A Sense Place (Saturday Review Press), and The Mountain Spirit (Overlook/Viking Pres). ROLAND THARP is the author of Highland Station (Poetry Texas Press), a contributor to Hawaii Review, and a Professor of Psychology at the Un Hawaii at Manoa. PHYLLIS THOMPSON is currently residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. DIETRICH VAREZ lives in the Volcano area. ROBERT WEXELBLATT teaches literature and philosophy at Boston University has published essays, poems and fiction in Massachusetts Review, '"'""''""' Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, Northwest Review and various other

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HOUSTON WOOD farms macadamia nuts on the Big Island and writes novels on the mainland. HOLLY YAMADA has recently graduated from the University of Hawaii. ESTHER YOON is a co mmunications student at the University of Hawaii.

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