Nephilims at New Year

“Incident at Kealakekua Bay” by Kawelakai Farrant

for Jenn, Hope and Emerson

Clarence “Three Prong” Tanaka get tako eyes.
He dives all along the east side, from Mokoliʻi to Malaekahana,
scans the gristled reef for lei of shifted stones.
He prods their make-shift homes, tickles muscled 
tentacles until they unfurl in deadly embrace.

His eyes glow when we read the Kumulipo—
how the heʻe slid from the old universe into our own. 
It squeezed itself through the narrow passage,
eight legs, three hearts, distributed brain.
It camouflaged its skin to match our world.
Scientists say it’s the closest we’ve come to aliens.

I told Clarence about my road trip with Jake, years ago.
How, while having beers at a bar near Roswell, New Mexico, 
Billy Drake wen tell us that the Bible get aliens.
Genesis 6, if you no believe. Go check ʻem, go check ʻem, go.
My friend Jake laughed at the talk of nephilims and fallen angels.

When we read The Little Prince, Clarence alone 
saw that the Prince was one alien too. 
My partner, Jenn, thought the same on her first encounter.
We were on a train back to Paris.
She was my beautiful, stubborn rose.
At the time, we never knew had Hope in her stomach.
The first black-and-white ultrasound made her look like one alien.
She had fine hairs on her shoulders, like feathers on an angel’s wings.
She cried at night like a small, fragile bird.
My students made puns all day: “Hope is the thing with feathers,” 
or “Hope you‘re having a good day,”
but in the end, what’s essential is invisible to the eye…

Emerson was born with an impressive, alien-sized head.
For Halloween, we dressed him as Yoda.
I vowed to bequeath my Star Wars collection to him,
to teach him Pidgin, Japanese, and Hawaiian.
Like Yoda, his syntax will be.

Clarence rarely posts pictures of his catch.
He thinks it's a form of virtue signaling.
I disagree: Billy Drake “likes” my posts, I said,
despite the fact we live in separate universes.
Our perspectives are pretty much opposite on everything.
After Parkland, he was the one who gave me hope.

In truth, Clarence feels bad each time he invades a tako’s home.
He bites them guiltily between the eyes.

On New Years, he was convinced he saw one alien.
It happened at 12:01 am, when the skies above Kāneʻohe were a warzone.
Cakes and fountains, aerials galore, a seizure of meteors 
exploding like shimmering wana. Among the riotous, throbbing show, 
an unidentified flying object came crashing down to earth.
The wounded ship landed near Nanilani Street,
where in the garage, Uncle Steve and Uncle Lex were drunk-singing
“I Believe I Can Fly” on the portable karaoke machine.
(Aunty Lori was in the kitchen cooking ozōni.)

The alien, to Clarence’s surprise, did not resemble a heʻe,
nor a Trafalmadorian with its single eye.
It looked…human…vulnerable, scared…illuminated
in the firework’s temporary glow.
It could just as easily have been a fallen angel.

In the garage, now quiet, Clarence sets out a bowl of ozōni. 
It is still hot.
He thinks of his New Year’s Resolutions, 
of the heʻe, squeezing between worlds, in a dark cloud of ink.