Democracia Poem by Bryan Thao Worra

Father was a tiger
Ground beneath the wheels

His fat was burned to light a torch
But there's no liberty here

Only the ashes of the village
That couldn't evolve

Where ghost grandchildren play with ghost grandparents
And the parents are nowhere to be seen at all.

Where have they gone? Where have they gone?
A delay of a day for an idea, a delay of a lifetime

for the dead upon the ground.

Look, what remains-

This hut hasn't the ambition of Ozymandias
These craters were once a rice field
This ox was no man's enemy

And what we have left to say could explode any minute.