Poetry and Fiction, Both Within Our University of Hawai`I at Mänoa Community and Beyond

Hawai‘i Review 76 Spring 2012 The Journal Hawaiì Review is a publication of the Board of Publica- tions of the University of Hawaiì at Mänoa. It reflects only the views of its editors and contributors, who are soley responsible for its content. Hawaiì Review, a mem- ber of the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines, is indexed by the Humanities International Index, the Index of American Periodical Verse, Writer’s Market, and Poet’s Market. Administrative and Technical Support Jay Hartwell, Robert Reilly, Sandy Matsui, Ka Leo, the U.H.M. Board of Publications, and the U.H.M. English Department. Subscriptions If you enjoy our journal, please subscribe. Domestic rates: one issue - $10; one year (2 issues) - $20; two years (4 issues) - $40. Subscriptions will be mailed at bookrate. Address all subscription requests to: Hawaiì Review, 2445 Campus Road, Hemenway Hall 107, Honolulu, HI 96822. Advertising rates available upon request. Visit http://www.kaleo.org/hawaii_review or email us at [email protected] for more information. © 2012 by the Board of Publications, University of Hawaiì at Mänoa. All rights revert to the writers and art- ists upon publication. All requests for reproduction and other propositions should be directed to the writers and the artist. ISSN: 0093-9625 Cover Art: Darren W. Brown Internal Art: Darren W. Brown Dear Reader, This issue of Hawaiì Review focuses on the idea of place - rootedness, lived lives, being at home. We’ve chosen artwork that celebrates our home, here in Hawaiì, and are sure that you will enjoy its natural beauty. The stories, poems, and nonfiction in Issue 76 all share a realism that grows from daily inter- actions with close people and familiar places. We hope that these works foster a sense of comfort in the reader. We hope that Issue 76 gives you a sense of coming home. We’d like to thank all those who submit- ted to the Ian MacMillan Awards. We are thrilled to celebrate our award winners in this issue. The Ian MacMillan Awards allow Hawaiì Review a chance to honor the outstanding work being done in the fields of poetry and fiction, both within our University of Hawaiì at Mänoa community and beyond. Happy reading! The Editors at Hawaiì Review Contents Ian MacMillan Writing Awards 2012 Winners Jaimee Wriston Colbert, Things Blow Up 7 Jaimie Gusman, Messaging 25 Cheri Nagashima, Suicide of the Lilies 29 Nicholas Y.B. Wong, Ode to Objects 43 Doug Neagoy, Sinking Relics 47 David Wagoner, UP 63 Interviews and Reviews Rachel Wolf, Interview with David Maine 65 Rachel Wolf, Interview with Janine Oshiro 73 D. Kūhiō, Review: Janine Oshiro’s Pier 77 Documentary Poetry Noù Revilla, Focus 79 Ooka Farewell 80 Amalia B. Bueno, Me and Jurison 86 Connie Pan, Black Sleep 89 D. Kūhiō, The Dog-Ears Revisited 90 Nonfiction Jody Hassel, The Body Remembers 95 Prose Poetry Jonathan Ullyot, An Apology 107 Shantel Grace, For There She Was 111 Fiction Ryan Shoemaker, After All the Fun We Had 121 D.J. Thielke, The Church of Carl 133 Soon Wiley, Call Me When You Get There 147 D. Brian Anderson, Girl Watching 159 J.T. Ledbetter, The Swan 165 Poetry Lisa Batya Feld, Recursive 169 Connie Pan, Almost 171 Carly Gates, Glade 173 Susan Rich, Stories From Strange Lands 175 Darling, This Relationship is Damned 177 Brad Johnson, Apogee 179 Cynthia Atkins, When Homer Roams 180 Bryce Emley, deathday 182 Mark Smith, Shell Game 184 Jonathan Barrett, After Watching a Nightmare at 20,000 Feet 185 Like a Nest 187 Peycho Kanev, Garbage Song 189 The Whale 190 D.C. Lynn, Fording Kidron 191 Matt Cook, Conventional Raindrops 192 George Such, Leaving Lombok 194 Jaimie Gusman, For the ones who smash their heads into windshields 195 For the ones who have to wait outside until the surgery is complete 196 For the ones who rip the heads off their Barbie Dolls 198 Adam Walsh, [metabody] 200 Jaimee Wriston Colbert Ian MacMillan Writing Award - First Place, Fiction Things Blow Up Jaimee Wriston Colbert I In 1955 Kilauea erupts for eighty-eight days sending fountains of boiling lava high into the air, burying twelve homes and evacuating Puna. I’m four years old and attending Howell nursery school where all day long a boy named Carl Craft pulls my hair if I don’t show him my underpants. At naptime I jingle my charm bracelet with its little silver bells in his face and he and I are ordered out to the lanai, where stretched out in front on my lauhala mat I slide my sundress up and let him peek, but he keeps pulling my hair anyway. When the day is over my brother and I pile out of the Howell- mobile, a big white station wagon packed with screeching four year olds, into our mother’s long arms. She’s a vision, waiting for us at the door of our Kailua house in her green and white polka dot halter-top and Bermuda shorts. We are relieved to be home. This is the year the Korean War ends, with over ten million people killed, and a Korean War novel is published called The Dead, The Dying, and The Damned. Three years later, August 1, 1958, night becomes day at 1 AM as the U.S explodes a nuclear bomb above neighboring Johnston Island, a brilliant white flash followed by glowing colors like the northern lights. But this isn’t Alaska. This is Hawai’i, not a state yet but they do it, with two more nuclear bombs dropped above Johnston Island. Each explosion is one million tons of TNT, fifty times more powerful than Hiroshima, just seven-hundred miles away from where we sleep in our beds, dreaming of the tidal wave spawned when the earth rocks, wailing sirens and police knocking on our doors 7 to evacuate, all the while inhaling poisonous sulphuric gasses from the volcano (that years later will be named vog), fueled by the nuclear wind. What did we have to fear? It was the 1950s and labor unions were being infiltrated by commies, our father said. Communists are dangerous, we’re told, particularly the ones in Cuba and Russia and Red China. We practice crawling beneath our desks at school, head between our legs and our hands over our ears to protect them from an atomic blast. This year Timothy and I are in the same class (we were periodically subjected to conflicting views on educating twins: they should always be together or they should never be together), and we hold hands discreetly under our desks, preparing for our deaths together, though in our above-the-desk lives we wouldn’t be caught dead doing this. In 1959 Hawai’i becomes a state and Kilauea Iki erupts with fountains rising 1900 feet into the air, the highest recorded in Hawai’i. These days you can stare down into the tunnels of former tree trunks the scalding lava burned away, where humans have tossed their litter, cigarette butts, candy wrappers, Primo beer bottles and a Diet Coke can. My favorite is one where a live Ohia tree is growing on the lava rock side of the empty space. Casting its roots all the way down to a soil base, it clutches the rock with its long, willowy root fingers. Moss and ferns grow through the lava sides of another tree mold, and maybe ohelo berry? My grandmother would have known. She could name every plant. But she’s gone now and Timothy is too. Mauna Loa above, blue as an ache in the early evening light. * 2009 and the air abuzz with the drone of insects, heat a white-hot blade. The homeless pick through the garbage leftovers of the open-air markets in Honolulu’s Chinatown for slightly bruised fruits, discarded 8 carrots, competing with the pigeons, the mynah birds, the mourning doves. All night in the airport hotel the jets roar from the runway, and the Inspectress checks for taken things: alarm clocks, towels, remotes for the bolted in flat screen TVs, face cloths, hangers, pillowcases, anything that can’t be nailed down. She slips into the rooms like a shadow, like a file through a lock, recording the wrongs, her white-gloved hand inside a suitcase here, a pair of pants thrown carelessly on a chair there, pockets gaping open like a mouth. This morning I said goodbye to my mother, sitting beside her nursing home bed where she was being entertained by little boys in white shirts, girls in plaid dresses, a woman giving me a massage, supposedly, and her friend, the wife of a lawyer, now dead. Reaching her hands out to them, she saw us sitting in sewing circles, city parks, and restaurants. The waiter is here, she’d say, what will you have? I think I’ll have a hamburger, she’d say, and she’d pretend to eat it; or maybe in another world, the one inside her head with its wild uncombed Einstein hair, and her eyes (which can’t see much these days anyway) mostly shut, she really was eating it. Timothy’s here, she said when I kissed her goodbye. I looked up for a moment expecting, what? My brother floating above her, his big shit-eating grin, a Heineken in one hand and flipping me off with the other? Fuck you! I whispered. I’m not about to let him see any more tears. Later, on the jet flying to where I live now, something nasty in the plastic container of nuts and dried fruits, a bitter taste, and worried about the salmonella peanuts from that Georgia plant (52 sickened, 7 dead across the freakin’ country and Congress drags the marshmallow-faced Peanut Plant President into a hearing where he keeps pleading the 5th; Did you know there were maggots and you let them go anyway into candies, cookies, snacks for kids? I 9 RESPECTFULLY DECLINE TO ANSWER, he says— about the little blond boy with the million dollar smile, dead from eating those peanut butter crackers), I barf peanut-flavored bile into the metal airplane sink then head back to my seat.

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