A Spring Evening

By Maung Htike Aung

​Smells like rain, I say.
The curtain sniffs and flaps its wings.
The fish on the plate replies to nothing
Enjoying its last evening.
 
Outside, the wind erases old memories.
It coughs but does not stop working.
The sea must give it a shoulder.
A home you’ve been looking for. 
 
The sky-belly swells
With the imbecility of what we know
On a shelf, a buddha whispers:
Will rain cleanse my sin?
 
Fish’s eyes half-shut. Then
It grows wings, horns.
A spoon in my hands hesitates to ask.
One door is slammed, the other—banged.

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A Walk With My Hometown

By Maung Htike Aung

​On the streets silence speaks loud. 
Apart from those ravens banging at the door. 
I found the key. I found the door. 
I found the room. It was there;
But it is empty. Out of the drawers
Sunrises & sunsets slip away.
Where does this homeless snow come from?
What happened to Schrödinger's cat?
Life is the box of paradoxes.
At least death is a genuine surrealist.
Always, panic sets in a long, calm silence. 
There is no thin line between the two things. 
A clock tower still works but remains unmoved.
The shop with a sign that reads “Closed  
Every Full Moon Day” is closed every day. 
There is a glacier in my neurons now.
Muted hope for happiness and holiness 
Mutates into the straw. 
You could cut the river with a sword. 
But not the blood. But I am talking not of genes. 
But the blood that is shed on the streets. 

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Under the Snow

By Maung Htike Aung

​Tattered clothes—presumable clothes
Flapping along a barbed wire. 
Hair overcooked & charred. 
In front of the hole in a forbidden public stadium
A team of kids digs into thoughts.
Hollow-eyed. Muted. Barren.
A defeated fist makes a clattering noise.
Cigarette butts are historical evidence. 
Just in the corner of insolent days
He stays & heats the air inside his soul to rise.
Or at least to feel light.
Darkness is born & raised on different soils
But the color of its side effects is the same, isn’t it?
Some of those who said they’d be back in a while
Have returned.

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​Maung Htike Aung is a Burma-based poet, literary translator and educator from Mandalay, Myanmar. His poems and translations have appeared in the Portside Review, Wasafiri, Volume Poetry, The /tƐmz/ Review, Mekong Review, and the forthcoming SUSPECT.