Thank you, Christopher.
I appreciate you and respect you.
I also, by the way, I appreciate and respect your
not truncating your first name because when I was a child--
this is a deep, dark secret.
My name was Andy.
So I appreciate you going for it.
We're going to have our next--
we're going to have our next reader.
[LAUGHTER]
We're going to have our next reader.
Pōmaikaʻi Gushiken is a queer Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Uchinaanchu
writer from Nānākuli, Hawaii, living
in Tovaangar, Los Angeles.
Their work has appeared in The Hawai'i Review, the Hawai'i
Pacific Review, and Hūlili, Multidisciplinary Research
on Hawaiian Well-Being.
Please welcome Pōmaikaʻi.
[APPLAUSE]
Tonight feels a bit like going on at the talent show
after Beyonce's performed.
So can we give up one more time for Christopher Diaz?
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Woo!
[GREETS THE AUDIENCE IN HAWAIIAN]
So thank you for the land and the people of this place.
One of my mentors always says you should always
recognize another person's land in your language,
so you can build that connection with them.
So I'm grateful for the ability to do so.
My name is Pōmaikaʻi.
I'm from Nānākuli, Hawai'i.
And Andrew did a great introduction,
so I'm just going to get right into it.
This first one is called "To the Shock and Horror of all My"--
sorry, excuse me.
"To the Shock and Horror of all the Settlers in my Environmental
Law Class, I Have a Complicated Relationship with Water."
[LAUGHTER]
"The crash of fresh water on Mohihi streets
My grandmother filling the bathtub instinctually
at the sound of children getting too close
To that crack in the asphalt left by months, years,
decades, centuries, stewing,
Poisoning the Earth.
We used to play in that street, you know.
When the occupiers' negligence would finally bring back the
wai
Our bare feet and the running of the sun,
gallivanting in the wake of water.
What are you supposed to drink when
your mother's scrapbooks read like a medical school textbook--
Colon, lung, skin, breast laid on a table made of heavy metals
extracted from broken water pipes.
Marinated in cancer, bashed over tombstones of my mother at 40.
Ma'akua in 1920.
Kapukaki in 1941.
Lahaina in 1867.
Nānākuli on the day our anthropologist
named us, no big thing.
News headlines that broken and poisoned waterless
places, but not names
Because places are only places until they place a diagnosis
In the places that place you in a place where you ask,
is this fucking play about us?
[LAUGHTER]
Three.
You remember, don't you?
The promises we made pacing defiantly
atop concrete springs, [i Kalauao]
Slurpee's standing our tongues instead of dark bitter waters.
Our wā i hala, our wā ma hope glazed over the concrete
where there should be wai momona
And the ghost streams beneath Sunglass Hut and Auntie Anne's
pretzels.
Running wild with the so-called drain water,
There are places where I place my tongue
on the shiny, chemical treated linoleum
Believing there is a place to place my makewai
[APPLAUSE]