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Ask the Brindled: Poems
Ask the Brindled, selected by Rick Barot as a winner of the 2021 National Poetry Series, bares everything that breaks between “seed” and “summit” of a life—the body, a people, their language. It is an intergenerational reclamation of the narratives foisted upon Indigenous and queer Hawaiians—and it does not let readers look away.
In this debut collection, No‘u Revilla crafts a lyric landscape brimming with shed skin, water, mo‘o, ma‘i. She grips language like a fistful of wet guts and inks the page red—for desire, for love, for generations of blood spilled by colonizers. She hides knives in her hair “the way my grandmother—not god— / the way my grandmother intended,” and we heed; before her, “we stunned insects dangle.” Wedding the history of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi with contemporary experiences of queer love and queer grief, Revilla writes toward sovereignty: linguistic, erotic, civic. Through the medium of formal dynamism and the material of ʻŌiwi culture and mythos, this living decolonial text both condemns and creates.
Ask the Brindled is a song from the shattered throat that refuses to be silenced. It is a testament to queer Indigenous women who carry baskets of names and stories, “still sacred.” It is a vow to those yet to come: “the ea of enough is our daughters / our daughters need to believe they are enough.”
In this debut collection, No‘u Revilla crafts a lyric landscape brimming with shed skin, water, mo‘o, ma‘i. She grips language like a fistful of wet guts and inks the page red—for desire, for love, for generations of blood spilled by colonizers. She hides knives in her hair “the way my grandmother—not god— / the way my grandmother intended,” and we heed; before her, “we stunned insects dangle.” Wedding the history of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi with contemporary experiences of queer love and queer grief, Revilla writes toward sovereignty: linguistic, erotic, civic. Through the medium of formal dynamism and the material of ʻŌiwi culture and mythos, this living decolonial text both condemns and creates.
Ask the Brindled is a song from the shattered throat that refuses to be silenced. It is a testament to queer Indigenous women who carry baskets of names and stories, “still sacred.” It is a vow to those yet to come: “the ea of enough is our daughters / our daughters need to believe they are enough.”
104 pages, Paperback
First published August 9, 2022
18 people are currently reading
479 people want to read
About the author
No‘u Revilla
6 books18 followersNoʻu Revilla is an ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) poet, performer, and educator. She is the author of Ask the Brindled, a National Poetry Series winning collection, selected by Rick Barot. Born and raised in Waiʻehu on the island of Maui, she currently lives and loves in the valley of Pālolo on the island of Oʻahu. Her work has been featured in Poetry, Literary Hub, Anomaly, Beloit, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress. She has performed throughout Hawaiʻi and abroad. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa, where she teaches creative writing with an emphasis on ʻŌiwi literature, spoken word, and decolonial poetics.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
February 26, 2024
Some favourite parts of this queer Ōiwi (Indigenous Hawaiian) poetry collection:
“And / for the dark pit of her mouth, we have reverence. / How she can stretch a no like a cobweb in her / throat, and we stunned insects dangle.”
"what-should-haved-killed-you-but- / under-these-circumstances-keeps-you-wondering-anyway- / how-honorable-is-it-really-to-swim-upstream-with-your-mouth-open”
“So it's best I keep hiding knives in my / hair, the way my grandmother – not god – the way my grandmother intended.”
“Ready to sleep in the roof of / her mouth, ready to build a home and call her mine.”
“tell me where it hurts, no one will say. / leave land. / leave sleep. / walk to the ocean / like your grandmother did / when your grandpa died.”
“so sacred / so queer / so queer / my / afterbirth / planted / so sacred / so sacred / I learn to grope / for her / in dirt / our fingernails / before / and after / so queer” (this poem is after Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Billy-Ray Belcourt!)
“Mother, I am the myth bitch you dream about.”
“And / for the dark pit of her mouth, we have reverence. / How she can stretch a no like a cobweb in her / throat, and we stunned insects dangle.”
"what-should-haved-killed-you-but- / under-these-circumstances-keeps-you-wondering-anyway- / how-honorable-is-it-really-to-swim-upstream-with-your-mouth-open”
“So it's best I keep hiding knives in my / hair, the way my grandmother – not god – the way my grandmother intended.”
“Ready to sleep in the roof of / her mouth, ready to build a home and call her mine.”
“tell me where it hurts, no one will say. / leave land. / leave sleep. / walk to the ocean / like your grandmother did / when your grandpa died.”
“so sacred / so queer / so queer / my / afterbirth / planted / so sacred / so sacred / I learn to grope / for her / in dirt / our fingernails / before / and after / so queer” (this poem is after Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Billy-Ray Belcourt!)
“Mother, I am the myth bitch you dream about.”
August 14, 2025
Sealey Challenge 2025: 14/31
I went into this collection with high expectations, but much of it ultimately eluded me. Many of the poems explore Revilla’s queer identity and how it resonates with, or stands in tension against, her family and her experience as a Native Hawaiian.
Still, I often felt a disconnect in the poems that addressed the friction between personal identity and family or culture, as though I was missing a crucial layer of meaning — and perhaps I was. That said, I admired the variety of forms and the way several pieces could be read in multiple ways. Revilla’s structural experimentation was inventive without ever becoming confusing, and those moments of clarity in craft stood out even when the content didn’t fully connect for me.
Additionally, the notes at the back were invaluable, offering translations of Hawaiian phrases and adding rich cultural and political context. The Hawaiian language is used throughout most of the poems, so I would actually recommend reading the Notes section before the poems themselves to be better prepared to fully immerse yourself in the collection, as flipping back and forth may disrupt some of the flow of these poems.
I went into this collection with high expectations, but much of it ultimately eluded me. Many of the poems explore Revilla’s queer identity and how it resonates with, or stands in tension against, her family and her experience as a Native Hawaiian.
Still, I often felt a disconnect in the poems that addressed the friction between personal identity and family or culture, as though I was missing a crucial layer of meaning — and perhaps I was. That said, I admired the variety of forms and the way several pieces could be read in multiple ways. Revilla’s structural experimentation was inventive without ever becoming confusing, and those moments of clarity in craft stood out even when the content didn’t fully connect for me.
Additionally, the notes at the back were invaluable, offering translations of Hawaiian phrases and adding rich cultural and political context. The Hawaiian language is used throughout most of the poems, so I would actually recommend reading the Notes section before the poems themselves to be better prepared to fully immerse yourself in the collection, as flipping back and forth may disrupt some of the flow of these poems.
March 1, 2023
I wanted to like these poems, but found most of them escaped my understanding on a first reading. Rereading them, they’re still obscure to me, but I think most are explorations of Revilla’s queer identity, and the ways it echoes or conflicts with her family’s identities and her sense of self as a Hawaiian native. The notes at the back help a lot to explain phrases in Hawaiian and to provide cultural and political context, but, first appearances aside, that’s not what these poems are really about. Based on a couple references in the poems, Audrey Lorde and Cherrie Moraga have been important touchstones for Revilla as she has figured out who she is, but at this early stage of Revilla’s career, she’s put the political in the service of the personal rather than the other way around.
I’ve been thinking about the differences between these poems and those I recently read by Ada Limon, whose poems each seem plainly rooted in a particular experience or anecdote, with a more universal lesson hinted at through Limon’s word choice. In contrast, Revilla’s poems hide their concrete occasions and are most direct when portraying abstractions. A few of Revilla’s poems reference specific incidents, but even those share limited details: “With the edge of a spoon, I scrape fish scales from my father’s ‘omilu & drop them into a Heineken bottle, nearly empty.” (Thirst Traps, 57); or “This morning I kissed a woman with a brick in her clay hands.”(Mercy, 30). But Revilla’s usual mode is to speak about or to a non-specific present: “we are the ones who know how to enter auntie v’s house and choose a bed, we know” (Dirtiest grand, 63); or “I would call it a trick, if it wasn’t so terrifying, how your mouth doesn’t move when you speak” (When you say ‘protestors’ instead of ‘protectors’, 21). This is consistent with an approach to life as mythology - truth as an eternal return, always enacting itself in the present tense, so the details don't much matter. It’s just a matter of personal preference, but this approach doesn’t really connect emotionally for me.
One technique I really liked: a couple of the poems have a repeated phrase or two printed in light text down the left side of the page, with the rest of the poem in darker ink, sometimes overprinted, on the middle or right of the page. I read this as a chant going on in the background as a kind of ground bass with the rest of the poem sung above it. I haven't seen this method used before but it’s so intuitive I could almost hear it as I read.
The acknowledgements after the notes aren’t presented as a poem, per se, but I thought they were as accessible, moving, and carefully constructed as any of the (other) poems.
I’ve been thinking about the differences between these poems and those I recently read by Ada Limon, whose poems each seem plainly rooted in a particular experience or anecdote, with a more universal lesson hinted at through Limon’s word choice. In contrast, Revilla’s poems hide their concrete occasions and are most direct when portraying abstractions. A few of Revilla’s poems reference specific incidents, but even those share limited details: “With the edge of a spoon, I scrape fish scales from my father’s ‘omilu & drop them into a Heineken bottle, nearly empty.” (Thirst Traps, 57); or “This morning I kissed a woman with a brick in her clay hands.”(Mercy, 30). But Revilla’s usual mode is to speak about or to a non-specific present: “we are the ones who know how to enter auntie v’s house and choose a bed, we know” (Dirtiest grand, 63); or “I would call it a trick, if it wasn’t so terrifying, how your mouth doesn’t move when you speak” (When you say ‘protestors’ instead of ‘protectors’, 21). This is consistent with an approach to life as mythology - truth as an eternal return, always enacting itself in the present tense, so the details don't much matter. It’s just a matter of personal preference, but this approach doesn’t really connect emotionally for me.
One technique I really liked: a couple of the poems have a repeated phrase or two printed in light text down the left side of the page, with the rest of the poem in darker ink, sometimes overprinted, on the middle or right of the page. I read this as a chant going on in the background as a kind of ground bass with the rest of the poem sung above it. I haven't seen this method used before but it’s so intuitive I could almost hear it as I read.
The acknowledgements after the notes aren’t presented as a poem, per se, but I thought they were as accessible, moving, and carefully constructed as any of the (other) poems.
August 9, 2022
Speechless.
July 8, 2023
“My grandma tells
me only some people have the eyes to see us. Shapeshifters fascinate, she said. And the ones without the eyes will clap & giggle, gazing only at our skins. How we shed & shed & never die. Reptiles, miraculous. But watch out, she tells me, dropping her wrinkled hands into her lap. The ones with the eyes. Sometimes they're worse. They know where you hide your tail. Duct-taped to your thigh, beneath your dress, throbbing. Only they can say I love you. They who see what happens at night when the dress comes off. They who see & do not run.”
TITLE—Ask the Brindled
AUTHOR—No’u Revilla
PUBLISHED—2022
PUBLISHER—Milkweed Editions
GENRE—poetry
SETTING—the kingdom of Hawai’i
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—mythology & mythical realities, queer themes, Hawai’ian language & legacy, indigenous themes, ancestors, colonialism & imperialism, lizards & mo’o, the spirituality inherent in the Hawaiian language and its intrinsic connection to the islands themselves, matriarchal wisdom, intentional poetic form & structure, many triptychs: language, meaning, & communication; love, romance, & heartbreak; grief, mourning, & funerals; identity, seeds, & marrow
“In search of a different ending
I. Summer with funeral & booze
…Always the same beginning: her own skin peeling itself away, a cycle within a cycle, until the day she decided to collect herself in glass jars. By her own hands, build a structure of forgiveness... …As a child at St. Anthony's church, she never learned to pray with candles. Yet as a woman, she needed fire. Improvisation. Display. Thinking she remembered a fact about god & evidence—she ceremoniously labeled each jar. Here was her skin, her faith. Like pages peeled from a hymnal.”
My thoughts:
The last time I visited Hawai’i (for a work conference), I picked up a copy of Haunani-Kay Trask’s poetry collection—NIGHT IS A SHARKSKIN DRUM—at the University of Hawai’i bookstore. My favorite poem from Revilla’s collection, “Eggs”, is, according to the Author’s Notes, “part of a longer practice of gratitude for one of Haunani-Kay Trask’s poems: “Sons”. Gratitude—deep, spiritual gratitude is I think one of the most notable features of a lot of the indigenous poetry I’ve read and Revilla’s debut collection is no exception. In fact, it is probably the most emphatic in its ancestor-facing tribute-giving themes.
But what is particularly notable about Revilla’s work is how present-facing it is—and how queer it is. Revilla recognizes and celebrates her place both in her current world and in the context of her cultural, matriarchal, & queer legacies. There are poems about gods, embodiment, sacred & liminal spaces, family, romantic relationships, and language. The variety of form and structures of the poems are also very brilliantly & technically accomplished and so well-suited to each poem that I am convinced if this had been published back when I was in college it would have been assigned in Professor Pardlo’s class. 😂 For these reasons I recognize a lot of what I love about my other favorite poets—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Shivanee Ramlochan, Romeo Oriogun, and many others—in Revilla’s work as well.
I loved all of the poems in this collection but my especial favorites were: “Eggs”, “My grandma tells”, “Iwi hilo means thigh bone”, “After she leaves you, femme”, “So sacred, so queer”, and “Notes on ‘ai erasure”.
I would recommend this book to all poetry lovers—this is truly a book for the poetry lovers. And readers who have any interest in languages too! This book is best read very slowly and thoughtfully. It took me two weeks to read this and that was with me not being able to put it down. 😅
Final note: I have a new autobuy poet to follow for sure.
“Catalogue of gossip, warnings & other talk of mo’o, aka an 'ōiwi abecedarian
…
IV.
All lizards and shapeshifters, I belong to you.
Each leathery bundle born to protect water.
Incontestable genealogies. Drinkable. If there was
one question, one sagging wonder
untested . . . how hard did the others throw
her against the face of rocks?
Knowing her pain would be our pain—
leaves yellowing quickly—he kini ka mo’o.
Multitudes emerging not as replicas,
not as a museum of reptiles but reptiles in fact.
Pressed forever against the bones of her own breaking.
We who straddle to survive. From Kaho’olawe to Mākena.
'A'ole i pau.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Season: Summer
CW // colonialism, genocide, grief (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)
Further Reading—
- Haunani-Kay Trask’s LIGHT IN THE CREVICE NEVER SEEN—TBR
- Haunani-Kay Trask’s NIGHT IS A SHARKSKIN DRUM
- ISLANDS OF DECOLONIAL LOVE: STORIES & SONGS by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson—TBR
- AS WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE: INDIGENOUS FREEDOM THROUGH RADICAL RESISTANCE by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson—TBR
- DETOURS: A DECOLONIAL GUIDE TO HAWAI’I edited by Hokulani K. Aikau and Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez—TBR
- INDIGENOUS PACIFIC ISLANDER ECO-LITERATURES edited by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Leora Kava, and Craig Santos Perez
- Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- Romeo Oriogun
- Shivanee Ramlochan
- Joshua Whitehead
- TE KAIHAU THE WINDEATER by Keri Hulme
- CONTENT WARNING: EVERYTHING by Akwaeke Emezi
- FRESHWATER, and DEAR SENTHURAN by Akwaeke Emezi
- “Girl”, by Jamaica Kincaid
- KA LEI HA’AHEO: BEGINNING HAWAIIAN by Alberta Pualani Hopkins—“…a culturally oriented Hawaiian language textbook. Its grammar lessons include the relationship between the language and the Hawaiian worldview.”—TBR
- ‘ŌLELO ‘ŌIWI: HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE FUNDAMENTALS by Hōkūlani Cleeland—“Each chapter also includes information on proper pronunciation and cultural usage of the language, enabling the learner to acquire a deeper appreciation of the intricacies and uniqueness of Hawaiian, the living native language of our island home.”—TBR
- HAWAIIAN LEGENDS OF THE GUARDIAN SPIRITS by Caren Loebel-Fried—TBR
- KA PO’E MO’O AKUA: HAWAIIAN REPTILIAN WATER DEITIES by Marie Alohalani Brown—TBR
September 1, 2022
"Does it always hurt like this?"
September 17, 2023
a little too abstract at certain points.
June 28, 2023
I found this uncorrected proof in a Take a Book, Leave a Book box. The cover intrigued me and upon a random page selection (see I. Summer with funeral & booze, 27) I decided to give it a shot. I had no idea what I was getting into.
Ask the Brindled first reads like "regular" poetry and then the second half experiments with style in unique ways. That might sound like a bad thing, but I actually rather liked the almost puzzle piece style Revilla adopted.
However, the majority of this collection is obscure to me. I still have no idea what I really read.
I mean, I know there's some queer identity/exploration here. And, I know there's some relationship and self discovery/healing and becoming stronger. But, individual poems? Most of those were lost on me. Many (all?) poems have Hawaiian words or phrases and I very much appreciated the glossary in the back. I do wish though that it was set up more like an index, or that the glossary just had the page numbers where things are referenced. I found myself flipping back and forth a lot and though getting the words right. helped me with understanding it kind of took away from the experience itself for me.
I think this would kill as an audiobook though. (Though of course you would then be missing some of the stronger styling choices you get with it being in print.)
My favorite poems seemed to come from the first part of the book. How to Swallow a Colonizer in part I. Then in part II there's a chunk of poems. I'll write their names out in case they were organized differently in the final print.
In Search of a Different Ending
I. Summer with funeral & booze
II. Summer with funeral & playing house
III. Summer with funeral & 3 a.m
Mercy
Ex is a verb
After she leave you, femme
I think this is one of those collection that the more you read it the more you have the ability to fall in love with it. I just don't know who we are right now.
Ask the Brindled first reads like "regular" poetry and then the second half experiments with style in unique ways. That might sound like a bad thing, but I actually rather liked the almost puzzle piece style Revilla adopted.
However, the majority of this collection is obscure to me. I still have no idea what I really read.
I mean, I know there's some queer identity/exploration here. And, I know there's some relationship and self discovery/healing and becoming stronger. But, individual poems? Most of those were lost on me. Many (all?) poems have Hawaiian words or phrases and I very much appreciated the glossary in the back. I do wish though that it was set up more like an index, or that the glossary just had the page numbers where things are referenced. I found myself flipping back and forth a lot and though getting the words right. helped me with understanding it kind of took away from the experience itself for me.
I think this would kill as an audiobook though. (Though of course you would then be missing some of the stronger styling choices you get with it being in print.)
My favorite poems seemed to come from the first part of the book. How to Swallow a Colonizer in part I. Then in part II there's a chunk of poems. I'll write their names out in case they were organized differently in the final print.
In Search of a Different Ending
I. Summer with funeral & booze
II. Summer with funeral & playing house
III. Summer with funeral & 3 a.m
Mercy
Ex is a verb
After she leave you, femme
I think this is one of those collection that the more you read it the more you have the ability to fall in love with it. I just don't know who we are right now.
June 11, 2023
A challenging and worthwhile read - I think I learned a lot. There were a number of poems I'm sure I didn't fully understand - but the ones that connected were really powerful and moving. Sometimes devastating. I appreciated the many forms - and the ways they can be read in multiple ways (sometimes physically). Intellectually powerful.
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November 29, 2022This book, from a queer Hawaiian woman, was a challenge I failed to live up to:(
Really, many of the poems feature at least some phrases in indigenous Hawaiian, and that threw me some. Some poems also seemed to Integrate elements of native myth, and again I drew a blank.
Contrasted to that, the poems here take many interesting forms; there are prose poems but also erasures, poems that seem to harmonize multiple voices (maybe). In short, it has. Lot of formal play, but I struggled to make sense out of it. I couldn't identify strong images or rhythms, etc.
In short, this book exceeded my skills as a reader.
Really, many of the poems feature at least some phrases in indigenous Hawaiian, and that threw me some. Some poems also seemed to Integrate elements of native myth, and again I drew a blank.
Contrasted to that, the poems here take many interesting forms; there are prose poems but also erasures, poems that seem to harmonize multiple voices (maybe). In short, it has. Lot of formal play, but I struggled to make sense out of it. I couldn't identify strong images or rhythms, etc.
In short, this book exceeded my skills as a reader.
August 1, 2022
I ordered this book a long time ago and it just so happens that it came right after hauʻoli lā hoʻi hoʻi ea. What resonated for me was the generational connection (particularly between women), sacred land, and the rage for the injustices felt.
This and probably Dictee by Theresa Cha are my favorite poetic works because of the portrayals of trauma, intergenerational dynamics in navigating such discourse, and the critique of colonial, racial, and patriarchal forces.
This and probably Dictee by Theresa Cha are my favorite poetic works because of the portrayals of trauma, intergenerational dynamics in navigating such discourse, and the critique of colonial, racial, and patriarchal forces.
July 19, 2024
The poems here are 10/10. She is a seriously talented poet, who I will be recommending highly! This is rich in Hawaiian culture, from an Indigenous Hawaiian perspective. There are poems in the language and it is used heavily, and although I didn’t understand, I kept thinking about those who got to read this and could, as if it was a special piece just for them. Which was beautiful in its own way.
Rep: queer wlw poet.
Rep: queer wlw poet.
July 15, 2024
A beautiful collection. I enjoyed a lot of the poems, especially the ones with religious themes. The whole book felt religious. I recommend it.
I am going to buy a copy for myself and a copy for a friend.
I am going to buy a copy for myself and a copy for a friend.
January 28, 2025
What a masterpiece of heartfelt poetry rooted in culture and tradition. Hawaiʻi and the beautiful history of the people who live there and care for her lands came alive. This decolonial work calls for a remembrance of their tender lineage and holds space for queer people, for indigenous people, the lovers of the land and the Earth and those willing to survive through verse, prose, erasure poems and visual creativity.
Some of the most heartfelt poems were “Mercy” and “Myth bitch.”
From “Mercy” (pp. 30)
--> “She smelled like a house, the one I saw built from scratch near the water tower in Wai’ehu.”
From “Myth bitch” (pp. 58)
--> “When I dream of women and wire it means I fuck like a woman at war with her body. Where is my rope? I am witch. I am island. Or am I a love story poorly translated?”
Some of the most heartfelt poems were “Mercy” and “Myth bitch.”
From “Mercy” (pp. 30)
--> “She smelled like a house, the one I saw built from scratch near the water tower in Wai’ehu.”
From “Myth bitch” (pp. 58)
--> “When I dream of women and wire it means I fuck like a woman at war with her body. Where is my rope? I am witch. I am island. Or am I a love story poorly translated?”
January 19, 2025
I went in with very high hopes for this collection, but found the majority escaped my understanding. While the explorations of Revilla's queer identity come through, the ways it, I guess, conflicts (?) with her and her family's identities as Hawaiian natives is where I felt adrift. The connections were not clearly drawn (for me, a non-native) so I was not particularly moved one way or another.
I found the notes at the back very helpful in explaining phrases in Hawaiian and giving cultural and political context, but, first appearances aside, it doesn’t seem that it’s what these poems are directly addressing. I may revisit in the future, to try again, but I think I will want to read some more Hawaiian literature before I do.
I found the notes at the back very helpful in explaining phrases in Hawaiian and giving cultural and political context, but, first appearances aside, it doesn’t seem that it’s what these poems are directly addressing. I may revisit in the future, to try again, but I think I will want to read some more Hawaiian literature before I do.
November 27, 2023
Pacific Islander Poetry as it relates to colonization as it relates to shedding skin. A tale about women and myth and witches and islands and how isolation is both inherited and chosen. Revilla plays with with space and font size in a way that entreats the reader and demands their attention. Ask the Brindled suspends belief rather in that what we have been told or infallible ideas thrown onto the bodies of Pacific Islanders and made to stick.
December 21, 2024
"We are, yet again, portrayed by you,
̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶i̶r̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶N̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ the mountain who was
"asking for it". Your lips so Sunday still. Sometimes I
almost believe you. So it's best I keep hiding knives in
my hair, the way my grandmother--not god--the way
my grandmother intended."
from "when you say "protestors" instead of "protectors""
No'u Revilla's poems are giving me what I need to breathe.
̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶i̶r̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶N̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ the mountain who was
"asking for it". Your lips so Sunday still. Sometimes I
almost believe you. So it's best I keep hiding knives in
my hair, the way my grandmother--not god--the way
my grandmother intended."
from "when you say "protestors" instead of "protectors""
No'u Revilla's poems are giving me what I need to breathe.
April 12, 2024
"How I eat one world at a time,
kick my pants off, brace myself
like a hurt animal on all fours.
Mean it -each time you fling your hips toward
night like bones to a monster.
Pick a better name for what you become
when you fly from my mouth, faster and harder than myth.
'A'ole i pau."
kick my pants off, brace myself
like a hurt animal on all fours.
Mean it -each time you fling your hips toward
night like bones to a monster.
Pick a better name for what you become
when you fly from my mouth, faster and harder than myth.
'A'ole i pau."
November 12, 2024
I came across this bookstore at a local bookstore in Oahu and so glad that I picked it up! It was extremely powerful - stories of generations of women - a very honest and moving collection!
“and crawl where neither man nor god can enter.”
“and crawl where neither man nor god can enter.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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November 6, 2025read for ENG 482: Literature & Sexuality & Gender / Decolonial Love
im jus rlly struck by all of it. idk. my mind has left not much thoughts at this point in the semester, but im trying to sit in and feel all that kumu no'u revilla offers in this collection.
im jus rlly struck by all of it. idk. my mind has left not much thoughts at this point in the semester, but im trying to sit in and feel all that kumu no'u revilla offers in this collection.
September 4, 2022
Authentic and Pure.
October 3, 2022
Very unique poetry that i found strange and interesting and unknowable. Loved all of it
November 21, 2022
(2022 - #82)
1) Hawaii
2) Trauma
3) Survival
Enjoyment: 3
1) Hawaii
2) Trauma
3) Survival
Enjoyment: 3
March 8, 2023
Fuck gods and swallow the colonizer. See in the dark how the light shifts and perceptions with it.
March 30, 2023
Wow wow wow!!!!
April 25, 2023
Trying something new ... poems and perspectives from a Hawaiian feminist author!
June 2, 2023
Read this.
My favorites: Erasure triptych and ʻōiwi abecedarian (me ka pīʻāʻpā Hawaiʻi). The endless forms of these poems are fascinating.
My favorites: Erasure triptych and ʻōiwi abecedarian (me ka pīʻāʻpā Hawaiʻi). The endless forms of these poems are fascinating.
June 8, 2023
3.75 stars
October 1, 2023
Really beautiful! Especially liked “About the effects of shedding skin”
December 3, 2023
Emotional, evocative, ethereal.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews