We knew we were liberated when we no longer feared for our daughters

 

Its been raining for days

the kind where the sky turns grey 

and you wonder if it’ll ever turn back 

its 53 degrees in Hawaiʻi (which is really fucking cold, btw)

and my 6-week-old daughter is sneezing more than usual

My partner looked it up

Some babies sneeze when they are cold 

so i am holding them both a little closer than normal

which is pretty damn close 

 

at night 

i close the windows

I warp her in a lei of blankets 

i say her name 

out loud

remind her that she is loved

safe

o wau no kou kiaʻi 

I am your protector 

i say 

over and over until she will be ready to say it back 

 

and her mother and i wait to hear her fall asleep 

and then we settle into each-other

this is the future we dreamed of, together

from the frontlines of a movement protecting our mountain, our water, each other

and it is full of everything sweet, and beautiful, and tender 

but we are no longer in a puʻuhonua

so it is also overflowing with everything i fear

 

The US navy is poisoning the water in Hawaiʻi 

tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel have already spilled into our aquifer

250 million gallons remain in these WWII single wall degrading tanks

and the Navy is refusing to drain and decommission them

even after admitting to the contamination 

on twitter and Instagram I see photo ops with “the best” of congressional leaders handing out bottled water and hotel vouchers to military service families 

like band aids on a bullet wound

 

and for the first time in my life

I feel completely helpless 

There is an invisible plume of poison working its way through our underground water systems 

And the only people who know the exact extent of it 

Don’t give a fuck about us

Our ʻāina and wai, and certainly think nothing of our children 

In fact, while preparing a suit against our state for demanding they drain the tanks the US NAVY insists: “It is not the fuel in the tanks, but the fuel in the water that’s making us sick”

Let me say that again

The US navy says: “its not the fuel in their tanks, but the fuel in OUR water that is making us sick”

And I give no fucks about their lyrical gymnastics

There is no rewriting themselves out of fault

 

I want to ask them 

how will i feed my daughter if all we have is jet fuel falling from the faucet 

instead I start googling DYI home rain catchments 

while I spin into a tornado of my own fear 

I can only think about the decades our people have been calling to demilitarize our island and ocean 

and how no one beyond our lāhui cared to listen

 

and now it’s the TV and twitter and Instagram all popping off 

and the water is rising 

and the Covid variants are multiplying 

and there are guns and cops and cages everywhere 

and my checking account is hemorrhaging money 

and my daughter is crying 

and it hasn’t stopped raining 

its been days 

 

and it’s true, i used to long for these moments 

a quality storm to quiet my house and mind

me in a corner with a pen and pad of paper

but today 

i have a sneezing daughter in my arms

and i know that means she is cold

so i am holding her a little closer than normal

which is pretty damn close 

and i cant stop thinking about how little I can protect her

and now I know I am really a mother of a daughter

because i am made only of worry 

 

and i am thinking about water 

the wai that is now fuel 

and the kai that is still rising 

all around us

and the mud that is creeping closer and closer to my doorway

with each day that the deluge continues 

 

and i am waiting for someone to come and hold me

to tell me i am loved

to say that at least for today the water is safe 

I am waiting for someone to remind me that we too are worth protecting

like a mauna, like an island, like our ocean, expanding 

 

i look into my daughter’s eyes again

o wau no kou kiaʻi

I am your protector 

she says 

first to the ʻāina, then to the wai, and finally to me

and for a moment 

I can breathe again

Because at the very least 

Malia and I did one thing right

We prepared one more wahine koa to take into battle

 

But I cannot help but think

is this really as far as we can dream? 

 

 

 

 

 

Call to Prayer

 "Call to Prayer is a poem that attempts capture and portray the experience of standing in the malu of the sacred. Whether that malu is cast by monument, an altar, or a mountain, the poem depicts the kuleana of recognizing our pilina to that which is kapu. The poem travels through the knowledges of faith, courage, devotion, fear, and aloha through the perspective of a Kanaka Maoli wahine who lives in the malu of our kupuna while continuing to endure the ongoing wake of settler colonialism, displacement, and alienation.

The poem intentionally stands in the malu of the Mihrab, Shangri La's most sacred artifact. And in her magnificent shadow we come face to face with her certain theft and current violent misdirection. We cannot look away, not from her outstanding beauty, and certainly not from the generations of violence that has allowed us to be in her unconsenting company. The Mihrab powerfully calls us back to our own sacred places, and in that moment we are invited into a mutual recognition, an unexpected intimacy between peoples, ʻāina, moʻolelo."

 

 

 

Call to Prayer 

Jamaica Osorio, 2021

 

If I have Faith

It is only because 

I know what it means 

to stand at the foot of a mountain

my whole body a prayer 

the whole island a monument 

and to see

the piko

shining through the mist 

I still feel her before me

Even from hundreds of miles away

Anytime I have the strength to look to the horizon 

 

If I have courage

It is only because 

I have watched our moʻolelo remake themselves in my generation

I have seen an island born from pō

From a whisper in the quietest parts of ourselves, 

Here 

A promise that we refuse to forget or forsake 

That this place is ours

Only so much as this place is us

And I have held it in my hands,

The birthing of our worlds

Pō, turned light, turned pūko’a, turned slime turned gods in a time of mere men

I have watched the call of the intrepid summon Manaeakalani

every morning 

in the hands of our kuaʻana

Maui, fishing us each 

One by one from the dark sea of this forgetting 

 

If I have devotion

it is only because 

I have traveled into the poli of our akua

I have crossed the piko

from wākea to wākea 

and sailed upon the dark and shining road of kāne 

deep into the realm of our ancestors 

and I have returned, 

with the knowledge that to  lay in the bosom of our kūpuna 

is to commit yourself to the prayer of memory 

to cast your eyes upon Kuehaelani 

and to pull her shimmering body from the skin of the sea 

 

If I have anger

It is only because 

I know the stories of our loss

Kiʻi burnt to ash 

Stones and koʻa removed

Now the foundations of Billionaire estates 

I am aware 

That nearly anywhere we walk 

We are trampling upon the ʻiwi of our kūpuna

 

I know the moʻolelo of the hundreds of thousands dead and dying

I have seen the signs of the separating sicknesses 

Born again, like Haumea, in every Hawaiian generation 

I know the names of the thieves

The crooks in finely sewn suits 

Praying to their capital 

As they pillage 

And loot our holy cities 

Leaving us with nothing 

But a whisper of what we once believed

 

And yet I still have aloha 

But only because

I am still here

With all my kūpuna beside me

And when I stand in your malu 

You 

Tower over me, like a recollection 

Like a mountain 

With so many stories I will never know

In languages I will never speak 

Thousands of miles away from your home

And the ʻāina and alchemy that made you

The hands that formed you

Like an island, consecrated 

You are here 

Pointed even in the wrong direction

A desecration 

And still your kaumaha 

Is not foreign to me

You feel more family 

Than stranger 

And in your magnificent shadow 

I hear our calls to prayer 

 

 

For Iremamber Sykap

 I am preparing for a class on environmental racism when I see the headline

“a 16-year-old boy has been murdered by the Honolulu police department”

That’s what I see, but we know that’s not what it reads.   

The police and mainstream media will first call this child a man. 

Call this murder a “police involved shooting”. 

Will call this “incident” an inevitability

chief Ballard will say, 

We have no further information as the officers involved are “consulting with their lawyers”

“They have been put on a four-day administrative leave”

That is the “normal policy” 

Ballard will admit That there were no weapons found at the scene 

While she hints that maybe one of the 14 or 16-year-old boys (she says men) tossed them

And now the whole internet is engaged in a public debate about whether or not a child deserved to die

And I am weeping, in awe of the magic of this misdirection 

We are having all the wrong conversations 

 

I am preparing for a class on environmental injustice

Where we will discuss that the most accurate predictor to environmental harm is race

The ordinary topics in this kind of conversation are about toxins, improper waste disposal, and water contamination 

But I think about how our hunger, lack of shelter and healthcare – along with the obscene presence of police SERVAILENCE must be a part of this environmental equation

The math that leads only to our displacement and death 

 

KITV lets out a hint 

3 of the 6 boys were unsheltered (they say homeless)

Facebook comments will call these children guilty of a lack of worth ethic

“they should have been in school, better yet, had jobs” 

Even from our own lāhui, calling out bastardizations of hawaiian values without context 

“hewa nō, make” 

The worst of us will debate “choice” from our moral high ground

our bellies bloated with privilege

 

I get caught in the black hole of Facebook comments 

But I cant stop wondering how long it might have been since any of these boys have felt safe, full, protected

I think 

How terrifying it must have been

These kids 

Younger than the age of my baby sister 

The full force of the honolulu police department in pursuit 

And firing 

To me 

This fear is so human

And so I see their faces before a single picture has been released

I know these ʻōpio- they are not strangers to me

 

And so of course when the news drops I wait for the revelation of what we already know 

The faces of these boys will look like ours
and if we have resisted the forgetting 

Paid attention to the carving of our ocean into digestible, colonizable, categories 

They will be familial 

Sons of our ocean 

Our moananui

The only blue that with ever be worthy of our backing 

If we hold thse genealogies as sacred 

As self evident 

They will remind us 

Of us

And so for just a moment 

the 16-year-old chuukeese boy, named iremamber 

Who was murdered by the Honolulu police will be our

Child 

brother 

family 

comrad 

Someone who’s life might matter far beyond the sum of mistakes made under the weight of a society that has already marked him as unworthy 

His brother says, 

“the police hate micronesians for doing what we do... surviving” 

And I think, 

I know that feeling 

Of being a target for elimanation 

A nusence in the neoliberal promise of progress 

living under the crushing weight of a failing state

 

I said it before

We are having all the wrong conversations

We are examining all the wrong “facts” 

We are engaged in a debate that promises only to strip us of what little is left of our collective humanity 

While a 16 year old boy, born of our moana lays dead 

So instead 

Maybe we could take a moment to pay attention 

To mourn 

To aceept our culpability 

And do anything other than cower, paralized

 

Watch the way the police will position the murder of a boy as inevitable

Watch the way our lives and the lives of ones we love have become disposable.

Watch the state pivot away from the root cause of crime—use this as a justification for more force against us

Watch the ways the state will justify all this violence 

While calling itself protection 

 

We must know now

More than. Ever that we much Watch out for eachother – becasue we are our only defense

We are our only chance of survival