Derek N. Otsuji

Born on Oahu, Derek N. Otsuji is the author of The Kitchen of Small Hours (SIU Press, 2021), featured in Honolulu Magazine’s “Essential Hawaii Books You Should Read.” He is a 2023 Longleaf Fellow in Poetry and a 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholar. Recent work has appeared in 32 Poems, Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review.

Poetry – Issue 37

•An Amateur Malacologist Recalls His Mother’s Stories about the Tree Snail’s Song

“Oh, yes, they sing,” my mother said / When she would tuck me into bed / And tell me of the song. . . .