VQR Online

You smiled, slumped in your chair.
I was reclining. We talked but
not much was said. It was the day

How an insurgent movement of pro-democracy activists—from underground, in exile, or in prison—returned to take Burma’s military junta by political storm.

Once again the land was alone
with me. The hills were humped and low.

A trip on a barge down Burma’s river highway

If only they wouldn’t leave us so alone.
At the fair, and farther out, in the arcades,
in arcadia—

Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy may have pushed Burma from an isolated nation to potential partner to the rest of the world. But a trip deep inside the rebel camps tells a different story.

Finally there’s someone I might
and have and could one day 
want again, or tarry—

In remote northwest Myanmar, the traditional home to the headhunting Naga tribes, skulls are harder and harder to find.

Yesterday I shared a cab with a priest
who said it was a fine day to ride cross town