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Best Poems Written by Bryan Thao Worra

Below are the all-time best Bryan Thao Worra poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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At Home

When I am in your home,
I am back to Laos after a lifetime.
I am in a place beyond words:

       Where the steam of the kitchen

       The smell of warm coffee

       The sound of a television

       The taste of a meal made with kindness

All feel like an America where our dreams come true,
Our memories return

And everything lost is found once more
Waiting with a smile, a sabaidee.

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Viewpoints

Turning your eyes to distant stars,
You witness infinity spinning as it has
Aeons upon aeons before you were born,
Orbits and memories, oceans and dust.
Wherever you are, but a speck,
An ambulatory grain, sparkling, alive,
Epitome of the momentary

Whether a witness on a Vientiane roof,
An ancient observatory in Beijing
Or some sandy step in Samarqand

Your true tale
One amid seemingly endless stories
No less, no more than any other.

Dare you speak of identity and legacies?
May as well debate the dreams of spinosaurs!
And yet we sing, defying our future silence,
The vast eternities pending

Knowing our yawning cosmos has been
Changed by far less long before
And perhaps once again

With the same ease as a Sunday sabaidee.

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The Last War Poem

I tell you, this is the last word for this war.
This little side war we were the center of.
 There is no justice from poetry-
 Any veteran can tell you that. 

They want their land, their lives,
Their livestock back. 

Grenade fishing in the aftermath of Phou Pha Thi
Has lost its novelty
To the man with a bullet fragment rattling
In his body, slowly tearing him apart. 

“Write,” they tell me. Write what? 

We lost, we were forgotten, we are ghosts.
We are victims of fat tigers and foreign policy. 

There is no Valhalla, only memories of Spectre gunships
There is no Elysium, only pleas for asylum. 

This jungle was filthy. 

There was shit. There was blood.
There were refugees
Who to this day cannot explain why they were the enemy
When the war came. 

Their sons fought. Their brothers died. 

Their uncles, maimed, were hauled screaming 
Into the shadows of the Plain of Jars. 

“Write,” they tell me, “so people won’t forget.
So someone will know. “

Lift the broken bodies with my words, bring them out
And say “we did not die in vain.” 

For every bullet hole, let there be a word 
To stand as a monument. 

For every lost limb let there be a sonnet 
To stitch the truth back together. 

For every eye gone blind, let there be something 
To take its place.

Something. Anything. 

How can you not have words for the war of whispers? 

How can you not shout, now that the whispering is done? 

And I swear, 
Each time I break this promise, that the next time
Will be the last word I write about this damn war.

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Departing Laos

The monks gave me a bag of Thai oranges
Before I left for the States.

Next time I come, I’ll have learned more Lao,
I promise.

      They promise there will be more to show the next time.

Sitting outside the Khop Jai Deu restaurant
Waiting for my bus to come

Elvis is crooning “Return to Sender”
       Because there’s no such number,
       And no such home.

I took a photo of the fountain
Next to the Scandinavian Bakery,
Tuk-tuk drivers loitering nearby.

Handing them some fruit,
They ask, “How long are you staying in Laos?”

   And I reply,
   “This is my last day.”

The sun looks like it could be peeled wide open
While I take a bite of a giant orange,

Trying to wring out a last memory from this light, 
Wondering when the King’s song is ever going to end

   The scent of citrus on my hand
   Sinks deeply past my bones,
   Trying to harden into an anchor

   The shape of a kind heart.

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Tom Mak Hung

We think them plentiful, like jumping shrimp and tiny crabs:
These mak hung, these chilies, the base for padaek.
The mouth waters with even a mention.

Every heart of Laos knows it well.
Cross oceans and mountains, battlefield and basement,
Oz or Kyrgyzstan, Modesto or Nashville, Phoenix or Pakse.

Meet anyone who can say sabaidee or a word of passa lao.
Even if they don’t remember their history or family,
How to nop or how to fon, or the secrets to singing a good mor lum
We still become one again with as little as a dish.

Our bellies fill like an ancient queen, a saint of Laos, 
Our heroines and heroes, our elders and children,
The clever beauties and the dreaming scholars.

Pounding away until it’s so hot you sweat,
A mix of sweet and salt, starch and bite
What poet, what priest, 
What politician, what legend can truly compete or compare?

We sing of the fine dok champa, but our people also sleep
With memories of mak hung, a smile, a tongue afire.

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Phonsavan, Laos

A stretch and sprawl of plain and hill
Where stones survive the coldest clouds,

You’re jars and trails and scars
Rebuilding your shattered face 
One hammered bullet at a time.

The heart of Laos beats here,
Desperate as a bush-meat market 
Of endangered beasts
Hungry for change, 
Weaving adversity into opportunity. 

You’re a place where 
The long-haired goddess of Hope
Is always itching to leave, but she’s

   A good daughter who always finds 
   One more chore she’s needed for, 

Who never quite makes it out the door.

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E Pluribus Unum

Youa tells me a story over the hot hibachi:
How she went to Laos
To see her lucky sisters

For the first time in two decades,
Since the country has loosened up enough
To let tourists like us in.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks me,
Then says she gave her sister Mayli $50
To help her family.

When Youa returned to the Twin Cities,
She learned her sister had been murdered
For the money

By Mayli’s ex-husband, who’d heard
Of their family reunion
And thought the cash rightfully belonged to him.

“Did you give your relatives anything?”
She asks.

“Yes,” I reply. “$500. But they say they need more
To get to America.”

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The Grass

Among jade grass blades
Even mighty Bodhi trees
Must share the same earth

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Aftermaths

Sometimes, I want to tell you.
Laying by your side, it’s a mystery to explain
Why I gave up my poetry for so long.

It’s a mystery to explain why I told you my mother is dead,
When I really don’t know what happened to her in those jungles.

I loved you, telling you everything I knew about myself,
Only to find, as the years went on, how little I really knew.

I can’t dream of my father, his face was blown off by an 
Anonymous enemy rifle before a picture could be taken.

I don’t have the voice to sing songs to you,
Or the stories, to tell our children who their grandparents 

     Really were.

The past has no gifts for me except an amnesiac’s freedom.
History has been swallowed into a speculative grave-

I don’t have a trace anymore, except the tales of strangers
Who saw my heritage slowly burned away

       Timber by timber.

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Planting

The farmers, the gardeners of the world
    Bend to the earth on every continent
 
    Seeds in hand, holes in the soil like
    A hungry mouth dark with mystery.
 
Touch her with a word from the page, she smiles.
Touch her with a hand at night
 
                      A million things might happen
 
Like a young shoot climbing from the ground
Who might become 
 
               A field, a shade forest, a bit of soup
 
                            On a complicated evening 
                            When she needs it most.