knowing how much someone impacted your life is something you only learn in retrospect
on cicadas, Amish quilts, and hula,
There was a time in high school when, every time the school bus took a turn to the right into the neighborhood where our destination was, I would remember my dreams. It didn’t happen every single day, but what always happened was the spot: that same corner, already swarmed by humans in their daily rites, my eyes churning sleepy clouds hovering above my retina,
I am sitting in my parents' backyard, trying to reassure myself that work-induced guilt is a faux feeling, that cities like this (what I’ve known most of my life) shouldn’t be considered the normal way of living,
A thought can’t leave my mind: I’ve been using a grass-green Amish quilted coaster for over two years without knowing it was an Amish quilted coaster. (I am writing this with my night cat by my vicinity). I know this because I visited Kalona a couple of weeks ago. Amish quilts are known for their chekered/diagonal patterns, reminiscent of blidning visual effect gifs; an almost palimpsestic fabric; patterns within patterns within patterns,
Right now, my boyfriend is 3,232.7 km away, walking in labyrinths,
The last time we were together, we spent over 72 hours listening to hula, kahikos, and Gabby Pahinui. On our way back to the city, newborn cicadas crash against the windshield,
What I miss the most about dancing hula were my feet on the ground; the tempered temperature of the stave parquet, the slow but ensured accumulation of dust on my bare soles, a thin film of time and kâholos, each of our hands narrating a story about nature; fingers delineating volcanoes, bays, women, the ocean; our voices, asking permission to dance to an ancient goddess beyond our better knowledge: that kind of ancient, deity-homage hula known as hula kahiko, different from modern hula auana, which entails a kind of perfection in the movement of the body which hula auana puts a blind eye on,
They are born to die, he said, as we drove through the city’s evening traffic, the window slowly closing not to inhale a nearby truck’s halitose breath, cicada’s ceaseless crying drawing to a close, an Amish horse-drawn buggy speeding along the highway,
As the shiny brown horse sped, carrying a human who refused to use electricity, I realized I’d never understood Anabaptism before Kalona,
Maybe that’s why I write here some days, to free myself from the pernicious idea of perfect writing,
My new poetry chapbook all blue awnings was recently published with If a Leaf Falls Press. If you want to buy a copy, you can email samueljriviere@hotmail.com