Category: Hawaii
Self Serving
by Josie
I wrote myself some love poems today, outlined in sun near the ocean’s smile. The waves beat down upon charcoal rocks and up frothed a great many minerals. I absorbed them all, flesh-first, like the fern drinks in the rain. I loved myself with pen and with sun; when thirsty, I drank; when hungry, I ate; when sleepy, I slept—and felt no reason … Read More Self Serving
Write Long
by Josie
Be patient, and write long. As long as the strokes of your eye lashes pulse the fingers to keys, then both of us remain alive. Be patient. Your dreams have no anchors; let them float light. Let the throat grow easy and jaw relax. Open and close the hinges of your mouth and feel the knobs of your shoulders merge with the elbows. … Read More Write Long
Step Two
by Josie
Step two : Get small, she said—small as possible you ain’t gonna reach the earth if you insist on being so big. Curl your toes; just like that til you sink neatly in on your center– double, triple, crisp and clean-cut like a paper brochure tuck yourself under and let the head droop.
Sunlight Pages
by Josie
She was a warm-weather writer the sunlight singing into her salted shoulders she tipped her head back and felt the flesh rise, tiny hairs stretching for a soft sky. The pen she held loosely between fingertips knowing it wasn’t for show she was here.
Autonomous Outsiders
by Josie
Praise be the autonomous who sit, crumped upright in a land of red Mountains. The ones who eat, food dripping from loose corners, at a table of stone, who lay, facedown on beds of Earth shards, listening hard for the rare sound
Breathe Your Own Air
by Josie
You wore their hearts on your wrists and ankles belly to belly hugging, chalky and holistic. They extended themselves to you palms sunwards, asking you to see them, to see them, to see them. Your own heart, you tucked carefully out of peripherals, finding happiness in the folds of not having to share everything.
Creative Process
by Josie
Three cheers of a dusted dawn; electric angels sweep the streets, and light clouds skip stones against the still lavender waters of the canal. Earth sings her morning tune, low and orange against the cool palm breeze. Creation calms and tells me I must start today from the inside. No half expressions.
Skin Sounds
by Josie
Joy arrives soundless in a cool morning breeze; sunrise rattles through oak palm trees, cooing as she goes, swishing through the drooping leaves. Infinite moments heard by skin only.
But Surely
by Josie
Surely it can’t all be cast to the tan lines. The sun—our cicerone across this celestial plane, casting her silhouettes upon skin shapes etch-a-sketching that which we outfit ourselves with— Surely. That can’t be it. Because I see him
World of Plenty
by Josie
At the end of it all rests the trees. Time stands just as requested in the company of pines. My steps are holy circles, hewn deep and echoing; I listen as my ten-thousandfold world system shivers like a wheel barrow child barreling down a grassy slope, arms stowed against chest. Bullets rain dully, as dumb as porcelain and half so strong.
Hawaiian Twilight
by Josie
Mustard-patched sweat on skin damp and oily, suddenly licked wide & clear with a salty breeze. The rose blooms tonight. For my part, I shall bear witness; there is nothing quite like the blooming of a rose.
