Unpoetry at the Frye is a quarterly public tour of current exhibitions featuring a rotating roster of local poets and authors. This partnership aims to inspire deep looking and questioning of art through ekphrastic writing techniques.
On June 22, 2024, we gathered with host Amy Hirayama, and poets Namaka Auwae, Justine Chan, Troy Osaki, and Jenne Hsien Patrick. Each poet has shared one of their poems with us below, inspired by the exhibitions Stephanie Syjuco: After/Images and Twilight Child: Antonia Kuo and Martin Wong.
The Pineapple, In Parts
by Namaka Auwae
“The young pineapple plants are separated from the mother tree trunk, then they will be transferred to new lands.”
and when passed from worker to worker,
briefly the arch of arms and hands
outstretched
become an altar
for a moment, something to be worshiped
as close to flight and fall before
the sky is eaten by shadow
and when placed in metal trucks
stacked and crowded one after
the other
does it feel more mass grave or exodus?
and if asked, what would be your birth?
the first bloom of seed in leaf
or the practiced exhale of a man
before violent upheaval?
how many different sounds heard before
recognizing it as an attempt at your name?
“The fruit grows from the center of the plant with sword like leaves surrounding it”
and before needing protection,
were the leaves ever just leaves
and not a hindrance to hunger
[Untitled]
After Antonia Kuo’s “Twilight Child”
by Justine Chan
Still to still to distill the chaos swill to stalk to swing and
bound around the bullring / la faena mi faena is internal
these months the flora repeating on / eternal you can’t pass
without the crush of them I mean crush them stab me I can
take it I can take it the shape still split lip and the story
of islands if we became our own extinct species, behemoth,
with terrifying ribs each but the same dreams of twilight
of walking against the sky then bent over from the wind
hasn’t it been seismic so inchoate what we have seen
of it
Finish the Unfinished Revolution
by Troy Osaki
Even if Boeing supplies the president enough ScanEagle drones
to spy on every activist in the Philippines
Even if he puts our faces on a thousand wanted posters
land defenders human rights advocates teachers
Hangs them on every stall at every palengke
the walls of every bus terminal from Baguio to Davao
Even when our barrios become sites for secret detention facilities
peace consultants labor organizers peasant leaders
disappeared
Even when our dead are returned to us with holes
big enough to fit a sunrise through them
We will finish the revolution
Until every mango grown on our islands stays there
Until every domestic worker in Saudi Arabia returns home
Until every bomb crater becomes a rice field
Until every foreign-owned mining project is buried in a cave
Until every factory worker owns the garden blooming from their hands
Until every U.S. warship docked in Luzon
is fed to the deepest trench in the Pacific Ocean
Until every cell of every political prisoner collapses
turns to dust and is hurled into the sun
Dole snaps a rubberband around a billion pesos in its pocket
a pineapple farmer in Mindanao is paid in a wad of air
We grab our bolos
wipe them clean
and rush towards the factory
Upon the Altar*
by Jenne Hsien Patrick
What was the first elder like?
To find out, begin in the night, the circle of stars. How they form spells
through qi, the green landscape will seem boundless.
you can almost see the edge of grass, submerged, memories
that create and transform something as precious as a flower
into an energetic brush stroke, like [writing a poem in the sky]
yin and yang burst through
whirling a cosmos, this hand forged process reveals how
the mountain heaves, leaves clouds in its wake
scattering mist, opaque, soft, shorn off strong shoulders.
In the corner of the mountain’s eye the birds return
early, crossing the border of the canvas from back to front, break open the sky.
When I finally climb to the top of the mountain
I watch as their wings push the night towards morning, to take it all
in one gaze, all the mountains below us will be small
and the past will bow with me as I rest my head on the soil.
[trees spinning off vapor trails in the sky]
*Note: this poem is written after the pieces Chinese Altar Screen by Martin Wong and Behemoth by Antonia Kuo, and incorporates my translation of the poem “Gazing at the Peak” by Du Fu, with two lines, indicated in brackets, from Martin Wong.
