Holoholo is the Hawaiian word for walking out with no destination in mind. In the three sections of this book, Barbara Hamby walks out into the current American chaos with its inferno of wars, street violence, apocalyptic fantasies, and racial tension. Fueled by an American lingo that embraces slang, Yiddish, street talk, and the yearning to be able to describe her moment in time, these poems encompass the complicated past, difficult present, and unknown future. Every foray offers a glimpse of the world constructed from one woman’s collage of consciousness.

Ode on My Nightingale

My nightingale is the conquistador of moonlight,
the engine of divine hullabaloo, the dance party
of shining headlights on a dark road past midnight,
the thrill of that first kiss in the battered Chevette,
the wrong turn that made me burn my map, clap twice,
summon my djinn. My nightingale is the stake
in my heart that can’t be dislodged, the hodge-podge
of my brain at two a.m. when the drunks
have gone home or passed out in the street. My nightingale
trills in the darkness, thinks of nothing
but his song, says forget me at your peril for I am
the tiara of rain that falls from the purple sky,
the lies you tell yourself to wake up from your dreams,
so listen, for my song will fade into nothing,
but nothing is made without me. I am the cosmologist
of the atomic, high priest of everything
you never wanted to be, all your highjacked dreams,
the screams in the muddle of night, the beam
of starlight on the river of sleep, for we are alone,
my darling, on this planet of night, and I am
your little god, your drinking water straight from the stream,
for my song is spooling into the night forever
and ever, amen. I am the derivative of sin. O let me in.