Lahaina (The Cruel Sun)
lahaina, in an instant, reduced into ashes
paradise, & the fire,
extinguished by weeping
& the sun is not as cruel as it is named
(in deference to
the bright witness)
& the wind a heavy sigh
exhausted by mourning
the people are brought to their knees
(lament of the living,
chorus of the dead)
& the banyan tree blackens for each name
& still counting.
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Monday, The First Bright Day
(after Mahmoud Darwish’s "Tuesday, A Bright Day")
in the earliest weeks of spring,
walking leisurely through the day,
two turkey vultures visit us
on a walkway near the Schuylkill,
their name meaning the cleansing breeze,
the golden purifier.
they build their nests
very near to the ground —
in the trunks of trees —
& one of them perches
atop a pile of stone rubble,
a friend or relative or mate of theirs
hobbling closely to meet & join them.
i saw the sparrow on the fence
& it wasn’t a dream, though
i am in need —
a robin slurps a worm
with great etiquette out of the soil,
& my friend & i open our eyes —
is it for the first time —
from the months of long inside-living,
sitting & drinking at the benches
& sharing stories as we weave through
the garden.
just east of the Schuylkill,
where the rest of the city sources
their water from the Delaware,
every resident of Philadelphia,
at once, is notified of a chemical spill
into the water —
8000 gallons of latex solution
flooding into Otter Creek,
then into the Delaware River,
& in the afternoon, fresh rain,
a clear message from the ancient water
that has been given to us
so abundantly, & so freely,
& look what they — not we —
have done.
Selected as a finalist for the 2024 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry.
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"Mount Diablo"
the east bay
has no mount diablo,
only called devil's mountain
by the Spanish
when the Natives escaped them
to the thicket.
at the dawn of time
was the mountain,
revered & named
as the Tuyshtak
by the indigenous Ohlone people.
there is no peace
at the bottom of the earth —
the mountain
is everywhere seen,
i watch its peaks
& the peaks watch me.
i was born at the foot
of the mountain —
the gift of my life began here
& so much life begins here,
through the blood of the mountains
in the volcanic heart of the earth.
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A Moment with Terra Oliveira
PDS: Tell us a little about your writing process.
TO: I write ritualistically more than I write with a specific discipline. As much as I’ve wanted a
regular routine with writing, I haven’t been able to make it a daily practice, mostly due to
the demands of my job and other personal commitments. But, I do write devotionally,
when something is pushing in me and wanting to take shape. I will often treat my writing
like a date with myself, and take myself somewhere or create a space for myself at
home so I feel like I am entering somewhere new. Writing can be a form of prayer, and
opening ourselves as a channel and medium, and when I remember to do so, I ask for
guidance before I begin writing.
With poetry, I let my poems sit and simmer a lot longer than I used to let them. While I
used to just sit, write, and share my work fairly quickly, now I revisit most poems many
times to edit, rework, and reshape until the poem feels at least more right. When I feel
stuck, I focus on another part of the writing process—maybe a different poem, or
restructuring my manuscript, or lit mag submissions, or something really monotonous
and simple.
Honestly, I set my writing down and walk away from it all the time. I don’t try to force it;
the space and the bouncing around helps a poem along. And then I’ll revisit the work at
some point to see if I can see anything else, anything new. But most often, it just comes
when it comes. It’s like I’ll be walking around with all of these missing pieces, and then
I’ll pick them up unexpectedly in a conversation or something I’ll see. I think I come from
an orientation of always looking, without always looking for.
PDS: Who do you seek to represent or speak to in your work? In other words, what communities & people inspire you to write?
TO: Part of coming from a mixed background has meant a struggle to feel belonging in one
particular community, which also translates to how I relate to readership and audience.
Over time though, I have begun to feel this immense, vast belonging, mostly among
people and communities I have met through political involvement, recovery and spiritual
communities, working class people, my family and friends. These are the people who
influence my writing, and who I hope to speak to.
I don’t think I could adequately represent anyone or any group other than my own beliefs
and experience, which even then is always in a state of movement. I like that my poems
can only really represent themselves, and whoever and wherever I was at that place in
time. I write to feel closer to myself, to God, and to the natural world, and I would hope
that my writing brings others closer to those things too. I do also try to write with
conviction, and I hope to speak to people that want something widened in them, or who
don’t want to look at something real that I see, but then can’t help it.
PDS: "Lahaina (The Cruel Sun)" is a powerful poem, with the influence of natural elements playing a major role in propelling the emotional struggles of each participant in the poem: the mourners, the readers, the elements themselves, even the speaker. Can you talk a little more about how you understand the natural world as an active participant in your poetry—or in general, how these things take root in your mind when thinking of and writing about Hawaii?
TO: I write about—and to—Hawai’i in the same way I would write to an estranged relative, as
I would try to get to know both an ancestor and a living being. Hawai’i itself occupies the
same place in my heart as all of the ancestors, lands, and traditions I have been
distanced from in my lineage—through adoptions, migrations, colonization, complex
family histories—that I have made great efforts to try to learn and build deeper
relationships with. I believe we are of places as much as we are of people; places and
the elements in them are bodies themselves, and the bodies we’re made of. This is how
they live in my poems because this is how they live in me.
PDS: What are some books and writers that have influenced your writing style?
TO: I return to some of Marie Howe’s poems in What the Living Do, and others, again and
again, mostly because of the mystical quality to her work, and some of her writing about
loved ones in their final stages of living. Her poems end so masterfully too, there’s a
special beat she hits that I could only hope to hit when I end a poem.
Otherwise, I’m very much influenced by my contemporaries, friends and fellow writers
who write about work, about place, about class and capital, and God. Lora Mathis,
Marion Bell, Patrick Blagrave, Ryan Eckes, so many others I read or met during the
years I lived in Philadelphia, the list could really go on. Some more classic favorites are
W.E.B. Du Bois, Lucille Clifton, other writers within the Black Radical tradition and the
socialist movement who influence my perspective more than anything. Also the late
Māhealani Dudoit—poet, founder of ‘Ōiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal, and my
grandfather’s first cousin. I only discovered her work, her story, her personhood years
after her death. I hope to continue the legacy she started.
PDS: Do you have any tips or words-to-live-by that keep you motivated as a writer?
TO: 1. Writing, like living, has a lot to do with trusting ourselves, and then refining where
things go sideways.
2. Really be committed to it, and do all that writing involves regularly enough so that
it becomes an investment into ourselves and our practice.
3. Take the pressure off the results of writing, just write and get it out there as far as
we have access to, and see writing as one of many avenues we have to share
our voices, views, and creative spirits with the world.
4. Be deliberate about the content (of all forms) that we’re consuming; take out the
trash a bit, as that helps make a clearer channel for our own work to shine
through.
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Terra Oliveira is a writer, visual artist, and the founding editor of Recenter Press. A finalist in the 2024 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Bamboo Ridge, The Common, Protean Magazine, and more. Her poetry and illustration collection, An Old Blue Light, won the Where Are You Press Poetry Contest in 2016, and she has been awarded international residencies at The Schoolhouse at Mutianyu at the Great Wall of China, and elsewhere. During the week, you can find her managing two bookstores in the North Bay. Born and raised throughout the San Francisco Bay Area (Ohlone, Bay Miwok, and Patwin land), she has been a resident of West Marin (Coast Miwok land) since May 2023, and she is of Azorean-Portuguese, Native Hawaiian, Chinese, and mixed Eurasian descent. Her work is an extension of her core practices and beliefs: in recovery, community, pilgrimage and retreat, and peoples' movements globally.
Find Terra Oliveira on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) @terraoliveira_
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