You can read my recently published short story about Pele's sister Kapo and her amazing abilities in the form of a letter from Emmalani's governess at the Reedsy website (click on the first link below), or here on my website, in the Short Stories section, (click on the second link below). There, below the story, I've posted pages from a textbook on Hawaiian Mythology for context.   Here is an excerpt:  
"These Hawaiians are great athletes, though their sports would terrify our polo players.  Years ago, a great slide or Lua was built down the slopes of Mauna Loa (the Long Mountain) all the way to sea.  Daring boys and girls lay down upon heavy boards and rode many kilometers, picking up speed and once in the ocean, they take to riding the waves. Honestly, Annie, mermaids are a pale and fragile myth compared to these ocean loving natives....At the Talk Story, I learned that their goddess Pele had sisters, one of whom was called Kapo. This goddess had a most unusual talent.  I am struggling to convey what I heard at that meeting in Waipio for it involves a woman’s’ private parts...."  

Naiveté and innocence interweave
         beneath her dark exterior.
And she continues to relate to me the woes of her friends.
 
Doesn’t she realize how beautiful she is?
Long, thick black hair caresses her lithe, athlete’s form.
Pure clear brown eyes pierce my mind
         and something in me cringes.
She must see right through my false identities,
         yet she continues her idle chatter of nothing in particular.
How could this child have been raised so unaware 
         of her own elegant beauty?
To tell her might be to spoil her attractive modesty.
 
She looks down and lowers her eyelids frequently.
She does not take compliments easily.
Shyness becomes her.
 
Sweet lady, she is always being asked to speak up
​and fears her soft voice to be one of the countless faults she curses herself with.
 
I’ll stay with her for now, be her friend for a short period more, but she will outgrow me.
         Soon; I feel it
                  She will come into her own.
But I’ll always remember her as she is now: unspoiled, without conceit, shy and beautiful.

STARVING ABROAD
​Him.  He's got the other half of me
          there,  where my soul lives
Me?  Now I'm free ...
          Here, where my body goes hungry.
Us, our loving was a feast.
     They offer goblets of lust
     They......... taste of dust.
But they are here ...
               where my body goes hungry.

​Manufacturing concerns
All painted on a brick wall
As if it would last.
Now with windows smashed
and plywood-covered entrances
Gutted reminders of failure
The sky, in spite
remains blue.
Unyielding azure.

​I love being in a crowd of coiffed and powdered ladies
the scents of laces and places
Murmurings and quiet laughter
Rosewater and memories
Not many locals on this ferry to San Francisco
We travel quietly, smugly
Amid the hushed excitement of no-hurry honeymooners
So delighted to be here
Me, too.
When our tourist guests head back to their Mobile Home Estates and Golf Link Tracts with pictures, T-shirts, bread loaves and chocolate, I'll still be here
living inside your postcards

In the morning, 
the world came rushing in through my ears, 
a taste of something toasting in the kitchen invaded my mouth, 
sunlight from the hallway accosted my eyes 
and the dream shredded.
 
But I want to hang on, 
so I tease out the threads ...

I was walking in a bubble
Everyone else was walking in a bubble
some in pairs
The shimmering bubble lifting magically
off the sidewalk
with each step
Germ bubbles
or snow globes?
Is that how we cope
or is that how we give up hope?

Hey Hey Hee Hee get offa my cloud
Are they permeable?
Are they peaceable?
Are they permanent?
Without the flakes or glitter
Is it a flight of fancy
or a glimpse of our socially distanced future?
​
I’d rather sleep 
than take a peep
at this dystopian dreamscape 
where everyone is allowed to be self-involved, 
encouraged even 
by their seldom shared shimmering enclosures.

​When I learned that the Rolling Stones big hit “Mother’s Little Helper” was about Valium “though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill” and it was the most widely prescribed drug in the 1950’s, I nodded with understanding.  Almost jealous that doctors are not doing that now.  So many smart women forced into subservient stultifying roles – those were NOT the good old days.  On social media, I see photos of the women standing behind the Mango Mussolini and say “The town of Stepford called, they want their Robo Wives back” and I get likes and hahas.  But seriously, they scare me. 
 
Scary smart chicks should not be expected to face life sober.  The hostilities take many forms.  Derision, shouting, storming out, questioning, always questioning, our conclusions.  Libtard, Snowflake, Pollyanna – I am none of those things.  Gas lighting is the new sexist art form.  Fighting every single day to be heard, to have our advice heeded.
 
De-humanization on steroids, the last four years.  So I speak.  And I write checks to progressive candidates.  And I write letters to my elected representatives.  I ask my friends, “why do you think Fox Media and Sinclair Broadcasting keep handing you someone brown to hate?”  I argue that no person is illegal.  That we should be ashamed seeing asylum seekers arrested just for asking.  There was never any caravan from South America.  Cliven Bundy was no hero.  Kyle Rittenhouse is just another in a long line of murderous angry white men, egged on to crazed attacks on an enemy manufactured by xenophobic propagandists.  Clutching their un-read Bibles, they come wrapped in the flag, spewing hate.  The Confederacy, founded on de-humanization, on the ugly belief in the superiority of the Caucasian race.  And all too often, in the right of the Master to beat his wife, too.
 
And on January 6th, the violently misinformed beat a police officer to death with flag poles and fire extinguishers.  Those are the faces of our abusers.  Let us punish without mercy the ones who lied to them, and pointed them like bayonets at the Union

​          When I was in college, for one of my classes in world history, I was assigned a textbook called “Herstory – the underside of History”.   The premise is that human history has been written by the victors, men who for many years denied literacy to women.  I began a critical examination of the history we are taught in school – tales of geopolitical conquest, tales of religious wars, tales of pharaohs and emperors, and concluded that these chapters are actually not that important.  Not to our evolution as a species.  Cultural and scientific breakthroughs, changes in the definition of family, the fall of matriarchies and the rise of patriarchies – these are the truly historical events.  Lines drawn on a map, borders and country names changing as soldiers and warriors bled to crest a hill for the right to rename it – what we celebrate – it is all decidedly one-sided.  “Progress” towards this goal of complete subjugation of the natural world is actually taking the human race backwards.  The so-called Renaissance was the Dark Ages for woman’s rights – the Napoleonic Code and the blithe assumption that women are chattel was the opposite of a giant step forward for mankind.
 
            Possessing a left and right brain working at full capacity in a society willing to accept only one per gender, I find that logic, reason, intellect, numbers, analytical thinking are not expected from one who pines to take brush to paper and paint EVERY branch of those stark trees silhouetted by the sunset.  From one who works steadily at the art of turning a phrase like a lump on the potter's wheel, without knowing what shape it is going to take.  And I wonder how many half-uttered thoughts died a-borning' because some pitiful pre-programmed inadequacy department determined that no-one wanted to hear them? 
 
          So I take much of what has been written with a grain of salt.  There was a female Pharaoh named Hatshepsut who ruled one of most peaceful and abundant periods in Egyptian history.  Her name was literally erased from history – the hieroglyphics were chiseled out of the stone monuments and tablets, her name was not included in the lists of rulers.  I always picture that chisel and the chunks of stone where once there was wisdom whenever I read an account of the period I’ve been researching for the historical novel.  Important contributions, I assume, will have been left out if those contributions were made by women.

I just edited a poem I wrote in 1982, it was published in Das Tor (image attached) in 1984, time to dust it off, eh?  This one's for all of us who ride (or used to ride) the bus in San Francisco:

Bus Notes
Glancing up from my hard-to-come-by window seat
Her hands flipping pages slowly,
Mouth intoning, she holds her squirming child
Eyes rapt
Feet wriggling
LOVE
Reading a story, like going to the circus
Things bright and new
Not like every day, seats worn shiny
The worn handles grasped by many
Riding the Muni to work or home
 
Chinese ladies sport
Polyester mismatches
Pinks, oranges, squares, dots.
Two dozen eggs crated, their white rounded tips pressing
against clear orange cover
How will she get those home?
 
So many soft sleepy faces today.
More than my usual morning share though,
of handsome men on the 5 Fulton.
Thin leather shoes with matching laces
and tastefully wooden heels
Leading to silver gray slacks
The ever-present darker-than-navy blue sports jacket.
Splash of gray in his carefully manicured mustache
Active eyes, lids not lowered
Unusual on this always sleepy bus with refined resigned faces
Flash of white starched cuff
Strides purposefully away.
 
Did you know
you were being sketched?