Poetry, Kalani Padilla
‘Aumakua, or Once, You Visited as Someone Other Than a Moth
for Aunty Grace
after Ilya Kaminski’s “We Lived Happily During the War”
Wasn’t it unforgivable somehow?
I told the poet he’d “changed my life”
and he said, Your life is beautiful ./;/—
it does not need to be changed. It was dark out,
and in the fog were thousands of goldenrods.
The grasshopper perched on the showerhead
catches me now in a naked stare, and when it leaps
at me, I whack it down into the drain.
Like a ballet dancer on a music box it runs out
of inner torsion. Because it still takes
almost too much courage to say
you died. Even in small waters I
remember you. I even pray
Let me save something. I even repent
that I didn’t save it with the puddles in my hands
like we couldn’t (we didn’t)
save you.
Jakob, 24, Leo
The Avid Hackeysacker,
according to his profile,
reaches down to hold
my chin, lifting my eyes from a last
lick of his hip bone. He reaches actually
latitudinally, seeing as we are
horizontal; reaches actually,
if i’m imagining correctly
the map of Missoula,
East toward Georgia,
where he’s from. It tickles him
that Missoula is East on my compass.
For a time we check in and out
of each other like AirBnb’s dwelling
somewhatly is not a skill
I meant to obtain.
“Do these overalls” — the Yerba Mate Enjoyer
snaps his last little snap in place —
“turn you on?” I would have
become a birdhouse for his homesickness.
Kalani Padilla (all pronouns, @kp.scriv) is a Filipino-American and Kama’aina poet from Mililani, Hawai’i. Her waters are the Central Pacific, and the Clark Fork and Bitterroot rivers. Kalani holds degrees in Poetry and Theology from the University of Montana (MFA) and Whitworth University (MA; BA). Currently, Kalani tends home in Missoula, MT as a pastry chef and writing tutor. Kalani’s poems, essays, and short stories live with Bamboo Ridge Press, Waxwing, Waterwheel, Solstice, Poets.org, Poetry Northwest, Figure 1, etc.
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