The Trapped

The Trapped

The newspapers hadn't mentioned it
but the heavens naturalized 22,956 new citizens today
and were preparing with banners, cake and feather pillows
for the numbers to stretch into the 100s of thousands.

The photos from Burma were shipments of rice that couldn't
make it over the border, nuns chopping up tree debris,
and rotting bodies floating in the lakethe country had become,

but the stiff fingers of the dead aunts and uncles,
sons and daughters, mothers and fathers
pointed to the grey, ornate skies, where the rains came from.

The dead had climbed into the watery sky
on gospel songs of slaves,on the skirts of indiginas,
on the proverbs of farmers

On a wall of water that ripped breath and roof from lung and land
they marched, dead and out of reach
of the sound proofed fingers of the Tatmadaw
whispering the names of the family left behind.