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Grant’s Pass, OR

Welcome. My name is Azra. I’m a multimedia storyteller and friend of Mother Earth.

I was born and raised on the island of O’ahu, in Waipahu, Hawai’i, on Kanaka Maoli land. My father’s family is from the island of Boriken, and my mother’s originally from the Philippines.

I’m grateful to be alive during these transformative times and I hope that my gifts of story make a difference, somehow.

Hawai’i Island w/ spouse & furbaby

  • Las Canciones de los Coquìs

    Las Canciones de los Coquìs

    A midnight chorus sings me awake. Warnings of laughter and future mistakes. Past behind yet further ahead: obsolete technology, like living dead. Whisper ghosts and daemons, too. Echoing caves, ancient sigils, true. Clouds and dust from ear to ear. Shadows flex while children fear. Listen careful, sure-footed Goat, for Mountains move and Rivers float. Old…

  • Poem: R-evolution Whispers

    Poem: R-evolution Whispers

    Paradoxical reveal The bi-polarities shift In plain sight, steal As stellar drift. Harmonious war And layered Truth Of ever-changing lore Beckons the sleuth. Etch into the Sky Cave the Midnight Story One Mind to rave Once fractured glory. For the winged children Immortal Death And the mythic forbidden In star light, steps. Awaken all demons…

  • Midnight Poem: The Path to the Garden

    Midnight Poem: The Path to the Garden

    Time passes slowly, far more quickly, I recall. I foretell…. The shadows on the cave wall whisper the kind of secrets that everyone knows. The ancestors watch. As I balance two worlds at war on these tightrope shoulders while my breath dances with both love and rage. The paradoxical key is invisible to the baby…

  • Poem: The River Lethe

    Poem: The River Lethe

    The winds fill my sail and whisper to my heart. “Onward, warrior. Downstream where your reflection kept secret ambitions to wear the scapegoat’s scars like stripes upon back or wrists for the blood curse they drink in your honor. No You’re not allowed to pray. Because their god is not listening. Not to you, at…

  • Poem: The Social Ladder

    Poem: The Social Ladder

    I left my soul down on the bottom rung of the social ladder, burned in wood, a troll’s toll. The desert mirage no longer glitters like gold. The palace is but a haunted mansion of putrescent corpses and tormented souls. How long have I journeyed down this dark path? All this upward motion led to…

  • Poem: Awake at 4 AM

    Poem: Awake at 4 AM

    I am awake at 4 am despite exhaustion in my bones. The mattress springs have rusted from the tears I cannot cry. I am awake at 4 am because my body craves a poem, a witness to the mourning in my soul. A quiet death, invisible butterfly. I am awake at 4 am as white…

  • Poem: The Crossroad of Destiny and Fate

    Poem: The Crossroad of Destiny and Fate

    Suspended belief, like unsettled dust in dark corners of mind, tempt me to breathe. The pain subsides as I dare to hope the worst has passed. I remember my bloody knees and innocent heart between my teeth as I whispered prayers with hands bound and eyes shut tight. Decades have passed and still the ink…

  • Story: The Taino Rebellion, an Oral Tradition

    Story: The Taino Rebellion, an Oral Tradition

    Image Credit: Unknown: The drowning of conquistador Diego Salcedo sparked the uprising of 1511. The following is an oral retelling of the first contact with Christopher Columbus on the Caribbean island of Boriken, more commonly known as Puerto Rico, leading up to the Taino Rebellion of 1511, according to my great-grandmother, grandmother, and father. Click…

  • Poem: Mi Abuelo Muerto

    Poem: Mi Abuelo Muerto

    25 grams of melatonin, three nonfiction chapters, a bowl of chicken soup, and four hours of tossing. Not much has changed since the second grade… Too tired to sleep, I require a deep dive, bobbing for ghosts and ancestral hosts of these haunted homes… Past lives and nightmares, if I’d learned this, then why here,…

  • Midnight Poem: Whispers at my Window

    Midnight Poem: Whispers at my Window

    The windstorm and the wild fires have stolen my rest, roused by the howling of the night sky, the forest creatures’ blackened faces pressed against my bedroom window, asking, “Do humans still have souls?” An answer one might quest, lest I find myself caught up in some violent tempest, within, cobwebs and funnels, spun, like…