She brought the gray spoon
We hung upon the gallery wall
From the talaat stalls in downtown Phonsavan.
She was supposed to be collecting dab neeg-folktales

And we were showing off art we were so certain
Would change the way the world sees
       That stumbled elephant we rode in on.

Tacked on with a bit of gum
We lacked ceremony but not rationale:
       She was an indelicate work, this buang.
       A light cockatrice feather
       Crude malice her center
       Her bowl an echo of bomb craters
       Whispering mad as Gorgon.

"They dine with spoons like this all over there,"
We're informed.

"Hammered from war scraps the dogs
Find indigestible. They sold me this one
Certain it's American bullets at the core."
       "It was time, they said, we took them back."

I pondered how many startled people
This carnivorous spoon passed through
       in her previous incarnations,
Karma denying her a role in a finer flatware set for the saints.

Oddly, for as many threads as she cut short
       She was too weak to be the butter knife
She should have been.

             Swords into plowshares,
Someone scribbled casually in a comment card,

     One of many remarks
Disposable as plastic sporks.  

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Bryan Thao Worra is a Laotian American poet involved with the Paj Ntaub Voice literary journal and the SatJaDham Lao Literary Project. He resides in St. Paul along with his family and several hermit crabs when they're not traveling or switching shells. His website and e-chapbooks can be found at http://members.aol.com/thaoworra. He says khop jai (thank you) for making it to the bottom of this brief biographical statement.
 

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