New Performance Work

I hope everyone is having an excellent holiday season!

I am so excited! My health is coming back and I have some performances in the works. I'll be at Claremont in late Feb, Chicago at the AWP in March and Syracuse University in April. I am sketching out a new piece based on some of my experiences during the downtime.

I am realizing the value of conflict and resolution (as opposed to not rocking the boat until one either explodes with pent-up frustration, or smothers oneself in helpless silence). When violence is used against us, it often poisons our perception of what should be a healthy part of the human psyche--anger.

Anger is not inherently a bad thing, nor is outrage nor expressions of self-worth. But abuse takes this perspective away from us, since these impulses were used against us as weapons. Someone else's rage...someone else's ego or opinion, obliterated ours. And we never want to be like that, so we suppress these emotions within us. Anger scares us, we don't deserve self-worth, we aren't confident enough for outrage.

But if we are to be anything other than victims, or shells, or children, we need to experience these emotions, and learn what our abusers did not--how to responsibly and constructively incorporate them into our thoughts, feelings and actions.

That's what my new full performance piece will be touching on--wish me luck!

Thinking back...

Translation is tough work. Translating is poetry is often more difficult than writing poetry from scratch. One of my most difficult writing assignments was for a Los Angeles Zen Buddhist Temple. The head priest asked me to translate part of the service into English from Japanese. My Japanese is not that great, and neither was his English, but I think this lack of explicit understanding actually helped us focus on the spirit and meaning of the passage.

When we were finally finished, I asked him how long this translation would be used. He looked up at me, and gave me the most wonderful confused look before he said, "Forever, of course."

One of the best moments of my writing career. 

Writing update!

Hi All,
I hope you had a nice summer. I had a very busy one, and there's still a lot to be done! I will be speaking at Syracuse University on November 14. Also, I have an essay in Transfeminist Perspectives, coming out  super-soon from Temple University Press.

The poetry has been sporadic, but fruitful, and I have some new stuff ready to fly. I am working with the Hummingbird Review on a mini-series of poems for their forthcoming issue--so excited!

The most exciting news is that I am finally having a book published, with many of the best essays, performances, and poems that I have written so far. Some work has been previously performed or published, but much of it will be completely new. I am ecstatic at how the pieces are fitting together. I can't share the publisher right now, but stay tuned! :D

Take good care, everyone!
*HUG*
Ryka

Just a bit from He Mele A Hilo

from Chapter 14

Get fishermen and get fishermen. Oh yeah, and get fishermen, too.

You see, get fishermen who just like go to say they go fishing. They get the right poles, the right spinners, the right lines. They bring the beer and the flashlights and what not. And they talk about this bait and this place and that and all that stuff so that people who don’t know fishing think that they real good fishermen.

And that’s really what they like. They like people think they good.

Then get the kind fishermen who just like get the fish. All business, these guys. They just go do their business and fill the buckets full. Sometimes these guys fish with dynamite or use bleach for get tako. They no care about the water or nothing. They no like talk about what they do, where to go or nothing. No like give away secrets these guys. Someday no going have fish, and they going look for something else for get. But whatever they get, never going be enough.

And the other kind fishermen?

They the ones that can fish the ocean for generations, yet always still going get fish in the sea. The kind that catch ‘em not by the pound for sell, but for the good times and stories they can tell, with one Tupperware full chicken or styrofoam plate lunches, one soda sitting next to them on the rocks...

They the ones that know where the fish are, during what phase of the moon they going come out, whether the tide stay high or low or in between. What the air is smells like, how thick it feels between one’s fingers and on the tongue.

But more than that, they know the fish themselves, beyond pounds and inches...they know what the fish is—to the smaller fish it devours, as well as to the larger fish beyond. They know what it means to a proud father coming home with one heavy plastic bucket dangling from one bamboo pole to that rascal hanabata kid.

They know the laughter of birthday parties when get plenty sashimi and ahi poke to go with the poi. The taste of dried aku washed down with one cold bottle Miller.

And they know that the fish color is brightest when it courses through the water, and that it quickly fades as the fish gasps and quivers the last life from its gills. Sad, yeah? But from sadness come good times, too.

You know the type.

Here are some poems from the attic! :)

The Bosatsu’s Lament

We are about to lose our beauty

and our friends.

We have wasted time

in the heat of time’s desert.

In broken homes

just before they break.

At kitchen tables past bedtime,

where people whisper oh my God,

is this the way

the story is supposed to be?

We try

to be as agile as vacuum.

But our weight is too ugly,

our will, too strong.

No one will miss us, 

we try to believe.


This was the title poem of my third chapbook:
The Dead Thoreau

I am lying under the ground.

There is soil on top of me, and grass above that.

It is not a time for snow, because roots

are busily burrowing through my skin.

Where there is no light,

there are other ways to think of time.

I am never the first to know

when the sun is shining, nor when the picnic is canceled

because of rain.

The summer squall means little,

save for that exquisite wetness, indistinguishable

from an afternoon of sweet gentle showers.

Beneath the hawk and sparrow,

my flight becomes the revolution of the earth. 

Tomorrow will arrive when it is ready.

When the sun finally seeps through my limbs

I need think of nothing but the world I am creating

as I wait for what will happen next.

Zealots

A woman

her gray hair up in a scarf

shrieks something about “the foreigners

taking everything over.”

Her lipstick is the only color

on a day where ice and salt

wick from the asphalt into soles

and overcoats trapped in the muted deluge

of frantic umbrellas.

In the days of Noah

her flesh would have nourished the benthic

snails and nematodes

awarded unthinking dominion

over every mountain, every soul.  Above,

laughter at a drunken father’s nakedness--

baying of donkeys, rats gnawing through

floors.

She grips herself like tablets of stone--

Again, the foreigners

are taking everything over.  Passing mortals

avert their eyes

as Moses must have

when first approaching the burning bush.

How dare she call herself chosen!

Would that a truck would hit her,

let the color bleed from her lips, more salt

to thaw the ice, the road!  Then,

as apostates argue,

let us search the sky for doves, a single

twig, the promise of virgin land.