I dream of Nahnep and the blue-eyed sailor
Rent from DeepDyve- I dream of Nahnep and the blue-eyed sailor
They lie under palm trees swaying while an old sakau melody plays. She isn’t Nahnep because she is a young woman, beautiful. She is the serepein I never knew with hair that is frizzy, sirang, wild; she’s wearing a light blue likou tei tied above her small breasts. Her skin is especially dark next to blue eyes. The sailor is lying on his back, naked; his shoulders, arms, face are tan, but his thighs are milk. His hair is dark brown like the hair on his head. He is in a daze as if sakaula as she mounts him and kisses his face, hard. She smiles and laughs loud and free. Back and forth she rides him as the sun sets.
Emelihter Kihleng is a poet from Pohnpei Island, Micronesia. She first met Albert Wendt in 2004 when he was awarded the Citizens’ Chair in the English Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where she was a graduate student. Her first collection of poetry, My Urohs, was published in 2008.
Glossary
- sakau
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Pohnpeian kava
- serepein
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girl
- likou tei
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cloth wraparound or lava lava
- sakaula
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to be intoxicated with sakau [End Page 320]
