Punakea
There’s a walkup where I used to live.
This was on a sprouting island.
People there surfed the ocean.
Fish bit their fingers and licked their feet.
A bike I liked disappeared.
It misses me even now.
When the trades were windy they left red stains.
Clay filtered up from the coffee dust.
Along a hiking trail were fallen needles.
They littered like children.
Birds of paradise nicked passersby.
Lei strung themselves out on the runway.
Cars in tunnels carved through rock.
Night marchers stormed the drains.
And then there were the valleys.
And the ridges the waterfalls the sand.
Haoles hula honu and hotels.
Where there’s sun there’s fire.
Aloha.
A green flash holds up the horizon.
Aloha.
A pot of gold melts in the snow.
This was on a sprouting island.
People there surfed the ocean.
Fish bit their fingers and licked their feet.
A bike I liked disappeared.
It misses me even now.
When the trades were windy they left red stains.
Clay filtered up from the coffee dust.
Along a hiking trail were fallen needles.
They littered like children.
Birds of paradise nicked passersby.
Lei strung themselves out on the runway.
Cars in tunnels carved through rock.
Night marchers stormed the drains.
And then there were the valleys.
And the ridges the waterfalls the sand.
Haoles hula honu and hotels.
Where there’s sun there’s fire.
Aloha.
A green flash holds up the horizon.
Aloha.
A pot of gold melts in the snow.
Kim Stoker was born in South Korea and raised in the U.S. She's spent most of her adulthood reconnecting with her birth country and culture. She now lives in the Mountain West. Her poems have recently appeared in Pleiades, Nat. Brut, and Concision Poetry Journal.
I lived on Oahu for a few years during graduate school, during which time I became interested in how the fantasy of Hawai'i in popular culture was so different from the reality that I observed and experienced. Hawai'i is known as the Rainbow State, and "Punakea" is the word for a rainbow when it's barely able to be seen.
I lived on Oahu for a few years during graduate school, during which time I became interested in how the fantasy of Hawai'i in popular culture was so different from the reality that I observed and experienced. Hawai'i is known as the Rainbow State, and "Punakea" is the word for a rainbow when it's barely able to be seen.