Assumption
--nd 
--fterward 

We always thought showing them would be enough
Painstakingly transcribed the mail-in news
chanted sotto voce lines of poetry and soliloquies 
that spread like clouds over the sky
obscuring the stars phantasms with grave faces
We silently wrote these puddles of blood
recited tank routes
rehearsed the dance numbers to be performed in the square
even arrayed a wedding of the dead
Wormwood’s memory is bitter, the rose’s offering so fragile
We always thought showing them would be enough

An eyeball rolls over the baked earth
alone, meaningless, empty memory. 
“The seasons shift so strangely, people’s gazes are no longer wet. 
Refracted hesitation
stabs the self, and others.” 
O innocent, helpless 
dust cannot alter
topography. Could it be sandstorms,
that permanent desert feature,
have enveloped this stifled city
It is too easy to lose focus
Ideology is another word for hurricane

Witness becomes a wound hanging in air 
Expression the raft of deceit
Steal from my side the heat
of others’ candlelight 
Smash the hand-blown glass bottle
in my hand
The cards of accusation 
seal a tiny living room
cut-and-paste enemies into our group
Comrades float like fog
Every year we ready paper and our statement
its transcribers slip in droves into a pit
beneath the screaming of demonic flutes 
Sharpened pencils are pointed and pointless
One skewers the solitary eyeball and holds it high
calling it a discount fishball from the vendor’s cart

Lose language again in language’s sandy current
get hacked to pieces by a brand-new silence
The corpse of youth is growing fervently
this is not something we can penetrate
or avoid 
anymore 

Fingernails

Sleeping outside is a reality
The tents were likewise broken
Their sweat runs down our bodies
Just as young, as poor, as filthy
Negated people are all alike
Blood streams onto the ground

Maybe the song changed language 
Maybe the instruments look different
Maybe we should have gone home sooner
Maybe the statutes they raised are even bigger

The books they read the survivors don’t dare open
The country they loved found repugnant strength in amnesia
The souls they left here have been depreciated
The bullets we imagine perforated their chests twenty-six years ago

We prefer to call ourselves newborns
We have white teeth and a narrow but fiery love
The pavement we lay on is just as nobbled and hard
Smoke from their cigarettes shades our confused eyes

The tanks that ground them roll into our neighborhoods
The TV that broadcasted them cooks us fresh lies for every meal 
Our bodies blossom with gold Araguaney flowers like their achievements
The police they pleaded with crack our skulls 

They say they know how songs die
know how reason has been ridiculed
They know the skill to sit in silence is a self-restrained language 
know the hate of the defeated and the hypocrisy of fire

We say we won’t light any more candles
We say our imagined love might be destroyed by imagination
Our black disappointment pauses like a lost sheep
They say don’t believe the dictionary’s definition of “depart”
They say they like our parks, with those real trees
They mention a flighty sort of animal called “conviction.”
They touch our tattered umbrellas with silver fingernails