Ask Me for the Moon

While moving through Ask Me for the Moon, I couldn’t help but think of Bad Bunny’s song “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii”, a critique of colonialism, overtourism, displacement, and the loss of cultural heritage due to foreign interests—issues that also affect his home country of Puerto Rico. The piece itself moves quickly, the words phasing into one another, demanding close attention. I actually found myself screen-recording my navigation through it just to revisit and unpack the experience.

Certain phrases stayed with me: “all work is night work” and “guest approaches host, nature divided by work.” These lines expose the tension between pleasure and labor in spaces like Hawaii, where tourists seek rest and escape while forgetting they stand on Native land—served by the very people whose culture has been commodified.

As the poem concludes, Waikiki’s skyline fades into view. Instead of the bright, colorful image one might expect, it appears in muted shades of black and gray, metaphorically representing exhaustion and the invisible labor sustaining Hawaii’s tourism industry. Beneath the skyline, a collage of images emerges: photos spelling out “Waikiki,” a palm tree, waves, and a figure standing before the ocean. The sound accompanying these visuals—whether heavy breathing or crashing waves—evokes both the persistence of life and the suffocating labor rhythms described throughout the piece. The repetition of the word breath reinforces this duality between survival and exhaustion.

As readers, we become participants when clicking through the images, choosing our own paths and uncovering layers of text and turquoise words. These fragmented poems expand into longer reflections on Hawaiian culture, revealing the state’s control over Native rights and traditions. We learn how beaches celebrated by tourists are often inaccessible to locals, and how the hospitality industry depends on unseen nighttime labor. Through this structure, Zuern forces us to confront the hidden costs of leisure—the people who work tirelessly to maintain the image of paradise.

The Vine and the Fish

Scrolling through The Vine and the Fish felt like moving through a living archive—stories of men and women intertwined with species like kudzu, mosquitoes, lionfish, and Asian (Silverfin) carp. Each was brought to America for a purpose, only to be labeled “invasive” once their presence grew inconvenient. This dynamic made me think of indentureship and slavery—the way Asians and Africans were brought to the Americas to build railroads, cultivate fields, and provide labor, only to later face exclusion and segregation.

The piece’s language stood out: “good = native and bad = invasive,” and “real is the human desire to create order by imposing clean categories in an untidy world.” These phrases reveal how fear and hierarchy shape both ecological and social systems. The line “Fear of the body being invaded by contagion, fear of the nation being invaded by outsiders” draws a striking parallel between environmental discourse and xenophobia.

The poem critiques how society uses foreign species—and by extension, foreign people—until they no longer serve its purpose, at which point they’re rebranded, excluded, or erased. The discussion around renaming Asian carp to Silverfin mirrors this impulse to reframe what’s uncomfortable to suit a more palatable audience.

One line made me laugh in recognition: “There’s some resistance in the U.S. because we don’t like the bones in our fish.” I’ve been eating fish with bones since I was five and never thought twice about it. That simple line underscores cultural difference—and the privilege embedded in what gets accepted, rejected, or renamed.

Both Ask Me for the Moon and The Vine and the Fish use digital form to challenge readers to think about power, belonging, and the unseen consequences of consumption. Through interactive movement and layered text, they remind us that art—and resistance—can live in the space between click and breath.

Both of these pieces visually sadness. The Vine and The Fish describes the feeling of being out of place. I related to the poem the piece opened with, describing moving right before high school.

I sort of experienced this feeling the other way. Right before high school, I moved to China. I also felt very uprooted and out of place, but not in an unwanted and ostracized context. It was a strange feeling being able to relate to the piece in such a half-hearted way.

It made me more engaged in discovering moments I hadn’t had, moments of racism and alienation. The reality for many people. These feelings are important to encapsulate in art to allow others a glimpse into their world, demonstrating how ostracization effects people.

Ask Me for the Moon shows the dark underbelly or resorts and how outsiders take advantage of native land and people for profit. You click through a poem on a black screen as a black and white image of the resort flashes behind the words.

It is sad and ominous. The author’s diction feed into these tones, talking about the resort being held up by the muscles of the natives and living parts of the reef.

Leslie Hook’s” The Vine and The Fish “and John David Zuern’s “Ask Me for The Moon where he created with Adobe Flash-based digital poem, which is Zuern’s piece, and Web-based interactive poetry which is Hook’s piece. I find them both fascinating to read, to navigate through the click of a mouse. Both are digital storytelling, which are social analyzed. Hooks work elaborates liberation, categorization, and migration, and Zuern’s work is Hawaii’s tourism industries, hidden labor. The visual imagery of the stories was poetic, and 3D visual effects. Words that leap off the page leave you confused because it occurs unpredictably. The sound effects were a little haunting, and confusing. Hooks colors were gray, and Zuern’s colors are black, white, and turquoise. Digital storytelling is what makes electronic literature so unique and again fascinating; the entire world today is reading online, about every headline you can think of, and is always appearing to look downward, towards their cell phone for the latest hot topic headline online. This is all related to exciting digital storytelling, which is electronic literature.

Considering the diverse types of e-lit we’ve looked at so far, Ask Me About the Moon is underwhelming. The piece itself is lovely. The commentary about Hawaii’s exploitive tourism industry is important. But I’m not impressed by the format. The reader doesn’t do anything to engage with the piece at all. There’s nothing particularly unique about the words and images popping up on their own. I especially don’t like that I can’t refer back to verses without rereading the entire thing. My memory is too shoddy for that; the only way I could analyze this is by copying and pasting each line into a separate doc. So that’s another on the list of e-lit pieces that I have accessibility issues with. I truly believe this piece could’ve been great if the formatting did more to match with the theme. Maybe the stanzas could’ve played out against a brochure. It just isn’t enough as is. But bonus points for Jamacia Kinkaid being on the list of references.

I thoroughly enjoyed the The Vine & The Fish. The soft art style, muted colors, and the comic panels made me want to pay attention. The way Hook compares xenophobia to invasive species is so powerful. Identifying with demonized species because of the dehumanization cause by white supremacy is tragic. I’m the kind of environmentalist that is the first to advocate for eliminating invasive species. They pose genuine risk to native species and can disrupt the entire ecosystem, which will eventually have a negative impact on humans. But I also feel guilty. These animals never asked to be migrated in the first place. Their only “sin” is wanting to survive. The drawings of the carp made me feel that same guilt. But they are dangerous for native fish species. They do diminish primary food sources and effect water quality. And people will never pose the same threat that vines and fish do. People can’t be invasive unless you view their existence as inferior.