Burma, Before the Name Change

This morning it’s
small birds in the grating,
fluttering where you were

before you went.  Along the street,
a stream of dark water
slowly closing itself off––

uneasy cover, a grey
layer of what no one wants to
hold onto, falling
from five floors up.

It drains and collects–
not what might think–
rain, or relief;

just the aftermath of some people on earth
who've been herded here forever.

Burmese Elegy

The skyline seems sculpted
from tossed-off things, a scrapped
collection with no spring wall of
leafy greens
for protection.
Winter light
continually fractures.
Ragged branches claw at nothing without moving.

In Rangoon I saw
a black snake longer than I am
slide across the side street where I lived
and sink back into the dark stream
that ran between the houses.
The kids ask me all kinds
of unforeseeable questions:
Do you like John Denver?

You got beat when you were little?
I have to say yes,
not just because it’s all true,
but for the fact that
if you say no it’s the end of any kind
of magical thinking
for everyone,
all over.

Burma, or Colonialism Gone Wrong

The sky today, a collection

of clouds above

the power poles,

old, electrified wire

unwound across the city.

It’s so clear

that I’m not from here,

though there’s nowhere

else for now, save a slow-motion

rewind of a time of us, then,

a flock of grey birds

in the heart of the wind.

Someday we’ll be skeletal

all over again,

and the new day

will be nothing more

than a slant of light

that goes

right through you.

Burmese Day #2

Pale song-birds

nest under the eaves,

light green this side of the rain.

It’s no longer possible

to ignore the river,

the flooded pagoda—

a stroke of luck

as the stupa lit up,

struck gold

when the rain went.

Burmese Spice Market, Killing Floor

Downtown, across the street

from the Hindu temple

the spice market abuts

the abattoir, where, once

domesticated, then gutted, their blood runs down

the concrete gutters.

I have had no one’s hands

on me in forever,

and if I go this way—

in yet another sodden

southeast Asian city—

the sky gone grey,

dragonflies swarming

in broken arcs

above the broad-leaf trees—

there’ll be little left.

So today I’ll take this

walking steady, and slow,

in the flow of human traffic,

for the moment,

current.

Arches

Well-Diggers’s Ass by Van Eyck, 1434


Waves of color eke out from inside,
half-shuttered,
though that hint gets him
no ease as he is,
just a lens across the mirror.

He senses how pale
the world is–-in detail–
a couple with hands unfolding
in the air, a child, immanent,
as if to show there were something to hold

or hold onto, the rest of us
ripe for it, that expanse.
Somewhere, in time–-an age
of ice, internalized,
the well-digger has

his spade–-how little that means, he knows,
then and now, and when the blade splits in mid-thrust,
flint-like
sparks sucked up
in dark winter air–

he goes on, fuck-all,
imperfect form–-a metallic surge inside him, still,
a search for any cavity that might be–
see, nothing, he says to no one ever,
nothing, where his asshole is.

Invite

Tomorrow, if
and when–
a skein of geese
across the water.

It winds, in ways
you can’t,
or can’t help
but hover over.

As if, a leaf in the slipstream
carried beneath
with what, if I had it,
could be called

a skill–to fold
into that current

along the rocks exposed
where the river ran up.

Thuy-Van Vu