WEBVTT

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Thank you, Christopher.

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Thank you, Christopher.

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I appreciate you
and respect you.

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I also, by the way, I
appreciate and respect your

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not truncating your first name
because when I was a child--

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this is a deep, dark secret.

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My name was Andy.

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So I appreciate
you going for it.

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We're going to have our next--

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we're going to have
our next reader.

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[LAUGHTER]

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We're going to have
our next reader.

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Pōmaikaʻi Gushiken is a queer
Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Uchinaanchu

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writer from Nānākuli,
Hawaii, living

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in Tovaangar, Los Angeles.

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Their work has appeared in The
Hawai'i Review, the Hawai'i

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Pacific Review, and Hūlili,
Multidisciplinary Research

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on Hawaiian Well-Being.

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Please welcome Pōmaikaʻi.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Tonight feels a bit like
going on at the talent show

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after Beyonce's performed.

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So can we give up one more
time for Christopher Diaz?

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Woo!

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[GREETS THE AUDIENCE IN
HAWAIIAN]

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So thank you for the land
and the people of this place.

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One of my mentors always
says you should always

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recognize another person's
land in your language,

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so you can build that
connection with them.

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So I'm grateful for
the ability to do so.

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My name is Pōmaikaʻi.

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I'm from Nānākuli, Hawai'i.

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And Andrew did a
great introduction,

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so I'm just going to
get right into it.

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This first one is called "To the
Shock and Horror of all My"--

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sorry, excuse me.

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"To the Shock and Horror of all
the Settlers in my Environmental

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Law Class, I Have a Complicated
Relationship with Water."

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[LAUGHTER]

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"The crash of fresh
water on Mohihi streets

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My grandmother filling
the bathtub instinctually

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at the sound of children
getting too close

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To that crack in the asphalt
left by months, years,

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decades, centuries, stewing,

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Poisoning the Earth.

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We used to play in
that street, you know.

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When the occupiers' negligence
would finally bring back the

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wai

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Our bare feet and the
running of the sun,

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gallivanting in
the wake of water.

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What are you supposed
to drink when

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your mother's scrapbooks read
like a medical school textbook--

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Colon, lung, skin, breast laid
on a table made of heavy metals

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extracted from
broken water pipes.

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Marinated in cancer, bashed over
tombstones of my mother at 40.

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Ma'akua in 1920.

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Kapukaki in 1941.

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Lahaina in 1867.

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Nānākuli on the day
our anthropologist

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named us, no big thing.

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News headlines that broken
and poisoned waterless

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places, but not names

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Because places are only places
until they place a diagnosis

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In the places that place you
in a place where you ask,

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is this fucking play about us?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Three.

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You remember, don't you?

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The promises we made
pacing defiantly

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atop concrete
springs, [i Kalauao]

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Slurpee's standing our tongues
instead of dark bitter waters.

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Our wā i hala, our wā ma
hope glazed over the concrete

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where there should be wai momona

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And the ghost streams beneath
Sunglass Hut and Auntie Anne's

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pretzels.

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Running wild with the
so-called drain water,

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There are places where
I place my tongue

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on the shiny, chemical
treated linoleum

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Believing there is a
place to place my makewai

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[APPLAUSE]

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