Hand Washing

…

Knobby points that touched public places
And maybe the edge of our dinner plates,
An accident that could cause disease.
If she had asked, What are you doing?
I would have looked up from the basin,
Curl of steam like incense,
And answered, I’m saying myself, and you too, love.



1997



Day 12: #TheSealeyChallenge

iii. Fallen Figure

…

The northern lights
will float, probe, vacillate

the yellow eye
of the snowplow you used to drive
will seek and find you

2005

Day 11: #TheSealeyChallenge

Things to Do

Today: collect
trash, put
in truck, take
to dump, sweep
out truck bed,
feel love
for truck,
then do other things
I’m supposed to do
but can’t, fortunately,
remember now.
What I remember now
is from a moment ago,
seeing my father appear
in my mind’s eye,
then not.



Day 10: #TheSealeyChallenge

The Waiting

…Not until the next
dawn would he be alone again, night-
watchman of matter, sitting, facing
the water—the earth without form, and void,
darkness upon the face of it, as if
waiting for his daughter.



Day 9: #TheSealeyChallenge

The Visitor

In Spanish he whispers there is no time left.
It is the sound of scythes arcing in wheat,
the ache of some field song in Salvador.
The wind along the prison, cautious
as Francisco’s hands on the inside, touching
the walls as he walks, it is his wife’s breath
slipping into his cell each night while he
imagines his hand to be hers. It is a small country.

There is nothing one man will not do to another.

1979

Day 8: #TheSealeyChallenge

A Short History of the Apple

…Oh Westward
Expansion. Apple pie. American
as. Hard cider. Winter banana.
Melt-in-the-mouth made sweet
by hives of Britain’s honeybees:
white man’s flies. O eat. O eat.

Day 7: #TheSealeyChallenge

She looks like the real thing

When I was in college decades ago, I went to a strip club for the first time. I was with a guy. I went to prove how much I didn’t care.

Even better than the real thing was playing and a woman wearing thin strips of blue cloth danced on stage.

I’ve been thinking a lot about real things lately. Their simultaneous promise and impossibility. Each part of me, real to the touch; impossible to understand.

You?

The Accountant

…

Allow me to tug the thread until we are both bare,
to run my finger down the column. Isn’t that better?
Freed of your scholarship? Of your reliance on theories of light? That pacifier
like a cloud in the mouth of God.
...

Day 6: #TheSealeyChallenge

Haemorrhoissa

…Because no one touched her

she must have touched herself, she must have known a woman could
die from living untouched and preferred to be satisfied. Her red hands

turning slowly and brightly like fish under a faucet
in the back of the quiet, lonesome house...

Day 5: #TheSealeyChallenge

Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History

…

Someone tore my silver-trimmed collar off,
someone kicked my bowl, empty for days.
Then someone else, driving away,
leaned out from the car
and shot me twice.

He couldn’t even shoot straight,
since I died for a long time, in pain,
to the buzz of impertinent flies.
I, the dog of my master.

Day 4: #TheSealeyChallenge

On My Father’s 80th Birthday

…

If you liked being born you’ll love dying
…

Day 3: #TheSealeyChallenge

The door is fallen down

…

I sit underneath the cottonwoods—
Friends,
what am I meant to be doing?
Nothing. The door is fallen down
inside my open body
where all the worlds touch.

Day 2: #TheSealeyChallenge

Children walking with their grandmothers

Children walking with their grandmothers
talk foreign languages
that is the nature of this city
and also this country

Talk is cheap but comes in variety
and witnessing dialect
there is a rule for all
and in each sentence a perfect grammar

Day 1: #TheSealeyChallenge

Who will watch over us when we’re dead

In the latest episode of talking to myself on Twitter, I ranted about FB’s algorithm banning me from posting kaukauchronicles.org URLs to my group named Kau Kau Chronicles. The group is described as "A place to talk about recipes posted to kaukauchronicles.org.” The algorithm calls my post spam and gives me a choice of two radio buttons: I agree or I disagree. Disagreement is futile. There’s no human, who would likely see the error, to appeal to.

So, I asked this question of Twitter: Can AI be any smarter than its creator?

I received several replies—from bots that were clearly bots, phishing for personal data. So I think I received my answer.

I realized that I was working under a flawed assumption. I thought that for AI to take over, it needed to be smarter than us. And by smarter, I meant, have a capacity for humanity.

I realized that we're already living under the control of inhumane AI. Each time it touches us, we beg it for an empathy that it's incapable of. And in that repeated act, we become less and less human.

Crystal Body, Crystal Eyes

Dennis and I are enjoying these collaborations. I create a collage. He creates text and adds it to the collage. I add pastels, watercolors, and erasure tape. ❤️

Every time I draw or paint, I can’t help but remember doing a charcoal drawing of some bell peppers for a class in college. The professor was so frustrated by what I was doing, she grabbed the charcoal out of my hand, “fixed” my drawing, and said, “See? Why can’t you do that?” The story is layered. I stuck out like a powerless blue-collar sore thumb in that class. Her son was held hostage somewhere in the Middle East.

For me, art was and still is, about revelation, not perfection. If I wanted to look at some perfect bell peppers, I’d just look at some fucking bell peppers.

IN ASHES

Dennis and I collaborated on this one. ❤️

When I first started cutting out images for collages, I feared it. The ultrasharp x-acto knife and the way it slowly dulls itself just by cutting paper. I hated the precision required. You have only one chance to cut out this amazing spoon—don’t fuck it up! After taking a collage workshop, I learned to keep my eye not on where the blade is, but rather, on where I want it to go. Reminds me of being a Denny’s server years ago. To avoid spilling coffee from the six mugs on your tray as you walk them over to a table at the far end of the restaurant, don’t look at the mugs. Collaging has helped me to look, not look, and practice losing precious things. This last one is especially important these days.

Te 5 / Hand Five

I’ve had this book called “Geisha” for several years. I bought it in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble. It is full of photos and paintings of geishas doing geisha things.

What does it mean for a book on geishas to be in a bargain bin at a chain bookstore in America?

Over the years, I’ve cut up pages in the book to do a lot of erasure poetry and collages. As annoyed as I am about the existence of coffee table books about geishas and the fetish-driven myths they enable, I guess the book has given me a lot.

I work well when given something to resist. Thanks Geishas.

Giving in to maximalism

All my life, I’ve battled what I call maximalism.

The “too much-ism” of everything I choose I do. You feel too much. You think too much. You eat too much. Pull back on the language. Lighten up on the brush.

Settle down, you.

I can’t stop at just a little bit. I need to go to the place just beyond enough, where possibilities have been exhausted. In that place, I often find truth.

I’ve learned to self-censor and it keeps me from doing the thing I love most: creating.

No more, okay?

Digitizing Deliciousness

Hasegawa Honors Community “Aunties” by Reviving Old Hawai‘i Cookbooks

So happy to have our work on KauKauChronicles.org featured in a Hawai’i Herald story: Digitizing Deliciousness: Hasegawa Honors Community “Aunties” by Reviving Old Hawai‘i Cookbooks.

Thank you to the Zentoku Foundation and Mark Nakakihara for believing in our mission.

Thank you to Ida Yoshinaga for writing this story, sharing her time, expertise, and insights to tell the story of this project and the evolution of food culture in Hawai’i.

Please Wait (Or, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé

. . .
This is for all the grown women out there
Whose countries hate them and their brothers
Who carry knives in their purses down the street
Maybe they will not get out alive
Maybe they will turn into air or news or brown flower petals
There are more beautiful things than Beyoncé:
Lavender, education, becoming other people,
The fucking sky
. . .

Day 31: #TheSealeyChallenge