The Hawaiian Alphabet

by Colleen Kam Siu

Hapa is a Hawaiian word
that means part,
but more recently, half.

In 1870, Hapa
meant part-Hawaiian
and part-Chinese laborer;
the latter imported
for their bitter strength, eager
to escape broken promises
in Kwangtung,
not yet knowing
that’s the material
that makes a man
who calls himself Master.

Masters
who gave way
to Hapa-Haoles,
which used to mean,
half-Hawaiian and half-White,
just like the word itself
is half-White–

The Hawaiian alphabet was born into being
by New England missionaries,
charged with spelling out
a new world,
and in their zeal to pick
the 13 letters
to be the voice of God,
they overlooked a

holy
rhythmic
stillness,

replacing it
with a flat silence.
And 150 years later,
we’re still scrubbing
Hawaiian blood
from their own words,
an ultra-fine whitewashing
of promises never kept.

Hapas, the very first,
were born among
the fragrant sandalwood mountains
stripped bare,
the earth bleeding sweetness
onto the hands of children
who learned their strength
didn’t belong to the soil
nor the sea,

it belonged to the white God,
who separated “coolies”
from the colonized;
but even then,
the labor learned the Hawaiian alphabet,
and they made manapua and saimin
and ohana with their bodies,
their own uncertain time
measured out in bags of C&H,
in beatings, in legislation
of lessened worth,
in writings carved into stone
by our favorite American humorist,
who saw it all and said
that it was good.

Good
they could not escape
indentured servitude, good
they were without their language, good
they were without their kin,
their birthplace now another shadow
of subjugation,
of 100 Years of Humiliation,
of white opium into Canton bodies,
of white religion
into hearts and law;
and now, my generation
only knows
the white God and how to beg
for mercy for our sins,
how to fawn for safety,
how to give it all away
for nothing, like my mom’s
piano hands,

like the daughters of God
I let push me around,
and now our chests ache
with words we will never know,
so we crawl the earth shrinking
and praying for it to sing
to us, its

holy
rhythmic
stillness,

unknowing unfolding
across the ground
like a lotus.

Colleen Kam Siu is a poet and artist currently based in the Rocky Mountains. Her work has appeared in the Evening Street Review, POETiCA Review, Fahmidan Journal, Two Hawks Quarterly, Witches Mag, and Cider Press Review. She recently released a chapbook of poetry and paintings, Elements of Being, which explores themes of grief, regret, and transformation.