INTO DA BARREN WHITENESS

Wun church like build small domes or “igloos”
on dere property

foa help house da homeless

but da neighbors in da area
no like have dose kine of people around.

At da public meeting
dey talk about added traffic or congestion

but dats just plenty kine lip.

It’s da same story
in every community

dat if you like help da homeless

den moa bettah you go do dat
in somebody else’s backyard.

Da sentiment is obvious

and if it wuz doable
all of dose critics

would send all of dose homeless people
as far away as possible

to wheah old-fashioned igloos
actually came from

into da barren whiteness
of da North Pole.

By Joe Balaz

Biography:

Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English) and in American English. He edited Ho’omanoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature. Some of his recent Pidgin writing has appeared in Otoliths, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Angry Old Man, and The Ofi Press Magazine, among others. Balaz is an avid supporter of Hawaiian Islands Pidgin writing in the expanding context of World Literature. He presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.