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Hole

Today each and every person in this country / has a tiny hole as big as a pencil tip / in their chest.

  • Min San Wai
  • Spring 2021
Art by JC
  • Poem
  • Violence

Translated from the Burmese by ko ko thett

“Hole” is dedicated to Pan Ei Phyu, a fourteen-year-old girl who was killed by a bullet that came through the bamboo wall of her house in Meiktila, Myanmar on 3/27/2021.


There’s a hole the size of a pencil tip
in the bamboo wall of our house. 
Not so long ago Little Daughter 
piled thanaka on her cheeks and 
disappeared into that hole. 
She is gone for a long time. 
Mother can’t wait any longer. 
She peeps into the hole and finds 
herself looking down a gun muzzle. 
In the background is a gala dinner,
where Myanmar in blood and gore 
is chopped up and served. 
At the top of the grand table sits 
the pagoda donor, sipping a 
glass of Little Daughter’s blood. 
The dead wail in the darkness outside.
Mother passes out, repeating
My Little Daughter, my Little Daughter!
Father gets curious and looks into the hole.
Family members take turns 
peeping into that hole. 
Today each and every person in this country 
has a tiny hole as big as a pencil tip 
in their chest. 


Translator’s note: “Pagoda donor” is my translation for someone who builds a pagoda. Pagodas are costly projects, both to build and maintain. Only Burmese monarchs and queens in the past, and Burmese generals and extremely wealthy people in present-day Myanmar, can afford a pagoda. 

  • Grief Military Coup Myanmar Pan Ei Phyu Remembrance translation violence

Min San Wai

Min San Wai has been writing poems since 1990. He considers himself a poet who loves nature and humanity.

‹Also in this Issue›
  • Essay
Raising our Flags High

Stella Naw

A Kachin activist on reimagining an inclusive society after the coup in Myanmar

  • Intervention
  • Poem
Hole

Min San Wai

Today each and every person in this country / has a tiny hole as big as a pencil tip / in their chest.

  • Violence
  • Poem
Residual Lives

Mi Chan Wai

In a corner of this world / a most violent plot unfolds / out of a tragic opera.

  • Violence
  • Poem
Skulls

K Za Win

The Revolution won’t materialize / out of your mere thoughts. / Like blood, one must rise.

  • Protest
  • Interview
Thin Lei Win: Nobody Wants A Compromise

Michael Shaikh

The Burmese journalist on how Myanmar’s military is “wrecking everything” to hold onto power, and the popular uprising trying to stop it.

  • Intervention
  • Poem
The Fight for Rightfulness Will Be Victorious

Ro Mehrooz

I know your pain when you see dogs masticate the bones of humans, / when you see guns and imagine mountains of dead bodies

  • Protest
  • Fiction
Work or Fight

Yu Ya

The dead are from many places. But people are more afraid to live.

  • Protest
  • Fiction
I Will Be Back Soon

Sabal Phyu Nu

There must be hundreds of us hiding tonight. We all have mothers, fathers, and children expecting us to come home.

  • Protest
  • Fiction
In the Heat of Laughter

Thawda Aye Lei

Kyaw Kyaw’s optimism was anchored by a single, naive belief: that a savior will come.

  • Intervention
  • Fiction
Hide and Seek

Nay Cho Aye

I don’t want to be another father watching another child grow among the lies, the ruin, and the deaths it takes to keep one man in power.

  • Violence

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