Shipwreck
The year has swelled with tragedy, sweeping its feverish tides to grandma’s doorstep & delivering us here: rolling through the sea of her backyard, doused in morning dew & the sweat of her memories. As we lay astray in our country’s wreckage, marooned atop a sandbar of daisies, her voice starts…One night, back on Big Island…& hope glistens like pearls through the shoreline of her narrative. We find refuge in the wandering storyline & a lifeboat builds itself out of her speech. Intonation ossifying into mahogany planks. Cadence into caulking. Our family was so poor, we ate my brother’s rabbits for dinner, she laughs, recounting their sundry meals: bunnies, poha berries, sea salt, sunshine – whatever we could wrap our hands around. But today, her hands raise to pluck mountain apples & each is a fallen brother. There is too much to grieve. We tuck losses into the underbelly of history & continue our pilgrimage through derelict oceans, paddling from one shipwreck to the next. And yet, I imagine that her stories veil this ruin in daylight. Enough to last us through the merciless months ahead.
Logan Lee is a poet originally from Honolulu, Hawai’i, and now a student at Yale University. His poetry is published or forthcoming in Five on the Fifth, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and AC | DC Journal.