Captain says Hawaii’s early,
To subtract six hours
Before landing.
I’m lousy at adjusting hands
On Mondays, especially when
The one I love
Lives in tomorrow’s time zone.
Broken since four,
I avoided babies
Fearing transformation
Into Dadio,
The maestro of martinis
And swinger of belts.
My wing scrapes the clouds—
Below, hunks of lava
Float the violent teal.
These are steps to a place
Where the walls scream.
I study fragments
Searching for meaning
Along fingers of reef,
Jagged black shores,
Into the shallows
That drown.
Kirby Wright was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Wright has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a past recipient of the Jodi Stutz Memorial Prize in Poetry, the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Robert Browning Award for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in Poetry and The Novel. BEFORE THE CITY, his first poetry collection, took First Place at the 2003 San Diego Book Awards. Wright is also the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA’I NUI AHINA, both set in Hawaii. He was a Visiting Fellow at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii. He was also a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard Residency in Edgartown, Mass., and the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic. His futuristic novel THE END, MY FRIEND was published in 2013. He published SQUARE DANCING AT THE ASYLUM, a collection of flash fiction, in 2014.
