Burning Eden One Branch At A Time Poem by Bryan Thao Worra

My father, a skull before the wars were over,
Never saw my mother's flight in terror
As our humbled kingdom fell to flame and shell

My mother was stripped to ink among the bureaucrats,
A number for their raw statistics of jungle errors
Collated into cold ledgers marked "Classified"

My feet dangling in the Mississippi have forgotten
What the mud in Vientiane feels like between your toes
While my hands hold foreign leaves and I whisper

"Maple, "
"Oak, "
"Weeping Willow."

As if saying their names aloud will rebuild my home.