NVN Friday: 2 Poems after the Maui Fire
AQUAMARINE by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried and SILENCE AFTER THE MAUI FIRE by Christian Hanz Lozada
AQUAMARINE
by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
Smoke billows as wildfires destroy a large part of the historic town of Lahaina.
*
Associate with me— an aquamarine ring gifted to me on my seventh birthday. Years later, a family trip to an island few could name. Water off the island the same color as my ring. Pelicans dive-bombing for fish in the bay. On the path to dinner, no electric light—stars flung on black. Now tout le monde, and hurricanes like nuclear bombs, know this island and every paradise you ever loved. I want to resize my ring and slip it on my finger, but it will change nothing.
*
Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work has appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, pacificREVIEW, Topical Poetry, Quartet Journal, and soon, Consequence and HerWords magazine.
SILENCE AFTER THE MAUI FIRE
by Christian Hanz Lozada
*
I deconstruct the “Santa’s Village” Lego set and the house has been quiet all day while Hawaiian Uncle with stage 4 lungs watches the news and the house has been quiet all day the county asks family of the missing to submit DNA to match ashen remains and the house has been quiet all day after the fire Hawaiian Uncle escaped by sleeping on the shore and the house has been quiet all day and by crossing an ocean and by needing his niece’s husband to clean his ass and the house has been quiet all day long enough for health insurance ones and zeroes to change Hawaii to America and the house has been quiet all day
*
Christian Hanz Lozada (he/him) is the son of an immigrant Filipino and a descendent of the Southern Confederacy. He knows the shape of hope and exclusion. He authored the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not (2023) and co-authored Leave with More Than You Came With (2019). His poems have appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review (Pushcart Nominee), Bamboo Ridge Press, 34 Orchard, Mud Season Review, among others. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College.
The use of repetition, "has been quiet all day," is powerful in a poem about deadly fire, which is anything but quiet. Thank you.