The Little Girl With Curly Hair Poem by RIC BASTASA

there is this little girls with black curly hair
flat nose, thin eyelashes, wavy goatish eyelids,
sitting on a bamboo pole
(the common furniture there)
with bare hands and bare feet
staring at me,
for i am new here and i have a big tummy
and i am white skinned, and i have candied
inside my pockets, she knows that soon
i will throw all these candies in the air
for all the other children

but there is something strange about this
little brown girl with curly hair sitting all alone
on that bamboo chair

her father and mother were killed in the last rebellion.