Dan Taulapapa McMullin

The sky is bright with stars After a hot day The coolness of my body Leaving finger by toe in the heat of the spa Looking through the garden lights At tall houses around me I thought, No, just happy The night is bright with stars, She told me She no longer missed her parents But you loved them, I said I did, said she, more than myself And now I’m free That was my friend Pipi Such a whore, I said to myself Like me, such a whore like me As I hear the roosters of Samoa In the laughing of coyotes

Manatu, 2013

Fake Hula for Alien Tiki, 2014

There was a ship went into the sea over the body of my brother I am just a boy he was not much older than me the goddess is good and cruel wants her share of life, like us sparkling dust of birds far away whom we follow, the stars the blood red dust of life as my brother’s face disappeared beneath us beneath the ship which carried us and the goddess to where we do not know leaving the war of my grandfather the smell of smoke following us our keel, my brother, knocking down the doors of the sea the tall, and the wild waves coming, crashing under the keel of my brother’s name far from the sound of places we were leaving the roads we followed marching past my uncle’s crooked mountain forts while his men called out at us with our long hair on our shoulders first by my brother’s name who was this girl with him, leave her with us she is my brother, he said not glancing at me our songs we sang in the warm rain for the goddess blessed be her name her cloak the wild wood pigeons turning her crown the lone plover’s crying where now are you brother?

Dancing Queen, 2012

Coconut Milk, 2015

is a fairy-tale queendom with monsters whom I don’t know I only know my friends the fairies of Alaska, the Yupik, I mean fairies and white mountains that disappear into the sky bonfire at Drew’s when Jerrod said, Dan is lovely, except when he bitch-slapped me, which I didn’t, so I said, With my cock! and he said, Well, it’s good it’s small, so I said, Then it was pure pleasure, yes . . . ?