Christian Hanz Lozada aspires to be like a cat, a creature that doesn’t care about the subtleties of others and who will, given time and circumstance, eat their owner. He wrote the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not. His Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated poetry have been published in Bamboo Ridge, Cordite Poetry, and Emerson Review. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and teaches at Los Angeles Harbor College.
Where NASA Imagines Alien Worlds
I propose to [you] atop haleakala at sunrise, cliché hundreds of tourists taking the same
picture
~ Craig Santos Perez
We have been to Haleakala for sunrise, my partner and I,
but we don’t have the picture. We drove up after spending
the night at Tutu Alice’s homestead in Kula and were keeping
warm in her jacket and blankets. She is now deceased.
I imagine you had a plan, Craig, but I was so ill prepared,
honeymooning at my partner’s home. I brought no jacket or pants,
and know now not to dip cookies into sacred poi like it was dessert
or to fan boy at a B-list actor/uncle I’d idolized from theater seats.
I was so ill prepared for marriage and the drive up. At the base
of the mountain, the gas light shown bright and seemed to get brighter
as we tried to ascend above the clouds, or is it just marine layer
while keeping an eye out and avoiding the nene in the predawn light.
Our bravery got us so far—we crossed ghost-filled oceans
and bartered our shaded skins—but ran out of courage to crest.
We stopped just below the clouds, short of the top where the tourists
watch the sky catch fire and take hundreds of the same pictures.
I can only imagine what it looked like because I have not been back;
it’s as if there is a ceiling on our ascents and experiences. I call
the ceiling Tutu or wisdom because she tells me there is no picture
that can capture coasting downhill with the engine off, there is no
camera that can record the alternating laughter and anxiety
of the uphill life in the distance and the sharp decline ahead.