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Residual Lives

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

  • Mi Chan Wai
  • Spring 2021
Art by JC
  • Poem
  • Violence

Translated from the Burmese by ko ko thett


Come night, 
insecurity arrives on its toes 
with a pair of peeping eyes 
through bamboo mesh walls.

*

Baby cries, singalongs, 
dog howls and caterwauls—
all those familiar noises are gone. 
Between the dome of the firmament 
and the roofs of our homes
only the crows caw, over and over again.

*

Moles, fingers, saboteurs, dalan:
words that are news to me.

*

Foe has no label
written on his forehead.
But he is close. 
Very close.

*

In the depths of the night
when all lights are out 
everyone must hold their breath.
First the footsteps of the army boots, 
then the orders: 
“Two from this house!” “Three from that house.”
“Pull ’em down. Beat ’em up!”
Rabid dogs snatch our neighbors.
The dalan, a finger whose moral flesh 
is infested with maggots, is there to help. 

*

A bullet out of the darkness
is blind, and will hit a random target.
It will destroy  everything in its path.
In a corner of this world
a most violent plot unfolds
out of a tragic opera.

*

Come the next morning 
a group of remaining women 
from the neighborhood 
take to the streets to witness the truth.

*

Their mouths will speak up.
Their hands will stretch.
They will pawn their own lives
for their husbands and sons
who have fallen
on that blood-stained asphalt road.

*

By eight pm
with their residual voices
they will bang pots and pans
in protest, 
until 
they hear the footsteps and 
the finger again. 

Translator’s note: Myanmar, under the military regime, has always been a security-intensive state. In times of crisis, the regime steps up its use of what the Burmese call dalan, or informers, to instill paranoia among the populace and break the people’s spirit. 

  • Counter-Insurgency military Myanmar resistance Surveillance translation violence

Mi Chan Wai

Mi Chan Wai (1953) was born in Tha Htone, in the Mon State of Myanmar. In 1984, she wrote her first short story “I, the raft man” under her current penname Mi Chan Wai for Myeik Magazine. Since then she has continued to publish stories featuring the lives of fishermen, divers, and their families from the Myeik archipelago in various Burmese literary journals. In 2000, she received the Myanmar National Literary Award for her collection of sea stories, Heart Broken Oyster and Other Sea Short Stories.

‹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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