Noʻu Revilla

Slang for waterlogged woman

I remember I wrote begging
instead of beginning

Nothing to bury

What if there’s nothing to bury,
if the dead thing between us was a caged light?
You don’t put light in the ground.
So for ritual or a gesture
to the body of light we believed happened –
even if it didn’t, even if it didn’t survive,
we chose to dig a hole big enough for two.

Now to choose the shovel – 
how will you break the world open?
And for what? This shaft of wood,
that bitter, bladed tongue.
Maybe it’s the hole that makes the shovel.
There were years when no one could touch us.
You came from Paniolo, water rights in nā wai ʻehā,
kamaboko in potato mac salad. I was the daughter
of an HC&S man who planted the tallest tree
in Kahului. My mother loved you.
So maybe it’s visitation I seek,
a headstone or cold piece of earth that tells me more
than just here light lived and here light left.

Author’s Bio

Noʻu Revilla is an ʻŌiwi poet and educator. Born and raised with the Līlīlehua rain of Waiehu on the island of Maui, she prioritizes aloha, gratitude, and collaboration in her practice.  Her debut book Ask the Brindled (Milkweed Editions 2022) won the 2021 National Poetry Series and 2023 Balcones Prize. She also won the 2021 Omnidawn Broadside prize for her poem “Iwi hilo means thigh bone means core of one’s being.” She was a 2023 Poetry and the Senses Fellow at Berkeley Arts Research Center and has performed throughout Hawaiʻi, including in the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture in Honolulu, as well as in California, New York, Toronto, and Papua New Guinea. Her work has also been adapted for dance and theater productions throughout Oceania and art exhibitions for the Honolulu Museum of Art and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe. She teaches creative writing at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and is a lifetime “slyly / reproductive” student of Haunani-Kay Trask. 

Photos by staff