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the chinese cemetery (ft. crystal bi) - the michael character lyrics

this road is now called kahekili highway
but once it was just the road
through the bustle of wailuku
past takamiya market // plate lunch // korean short ribs
through communities whose roots are sugar cane sweet
whose deeded land p-ssed down through time from broken backed farm hands who did better for their families
past the newer housing developments
to the old quarter
to waihee
the road to waihee
to great uncle’s one-story concrete block // corrugated tin roof // noni and avocado trees backyard neighbors chickens clucking // hang dry the laundry // drive to town to meet the meals on wheels truck // last of his generation // home
two blocks down // the thicket that was the family store
and back towards wailuku, on the left, past the baseball field or maybe shortly before it
the chinese cemetery
tiny, jagged tooth headstones, a bed of bent nails for the long dead to rest under // half-collapsed red awning in the visitor area, right on the benches! // no visitors now
where are your kin?
are they late?
did they swing by tasty crust for a bowl of saimin before bringing the garden sheers and flowers and water bottle, to wash and tend to each grave with stoic ancestral obligation // set them each aright // bow their heads in silence // mutter // rip a hole in time and wave to a lost great uncle before packing up and heading back toward town // to the market // before returning home // be back soon? are they with you down there, too?
where did they go?

when i was a kid, cousin sandra had to fly to oahu to go to home depot
today things are different
puunene plantation closed its doors and the last cane crop waves cheerily, unharvested in the fields for miles around the growing airport; but the yoga studios are still here. or rather, are here now
angry young haoles blow past me with resentment for orientals on their intoxicant breath
and i treat myself to an expensive dinner in lahaina
a restaurant for the tourists
just a visitor
of foreign birth
on soil that is not mine
thinking
will i pull up weeds at great uncle’s grave?
mend the awning?
straighten the headstone t–th?
or will some wayward mainland transplant // here for paradise, for the air // clutching at the exotic // getting to know the locals // walk by great uncle’s modest plot in some forgotten j-panese cemetery // on land so long ago chosen to house the dead that no living even claim to own it anymore // a community of the departed as old as the plantations // and wonder
“how long has this been abandoned?
where are their kin?
where did they go?”

- the michael character lyrics

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