Ko Ko Thett, Bamboophobia

  

People in the picture

She who is in the centre of a group photo always smiles miles
higher than those around her

Only when you are in the centre of a group picture you smile
like she who is in the centre of a group picture.

That explains the gravitational pull of the centre. The more
people from the margin push towards the centre the more the
centre loses centrality. 

No lens of history is inclusive enough to keep everyone in the
picture. An extremely long shot is necessarily if everyone wants
to be in the picture.

In an extremely long shot people resemble matchsticks.
Matchsticks think everyone is the centre.

In any group photo, people’s shadows can be seen inclining
towards the centre. Knowingly or unknowingly people tend
to move towards what they believe is the centre. 

In so doing—

they move history with them.

Comprised as “a collection of new and selected poems published in the 2010s, including over a dozen poems presented in the original Burmese” alongside translations by the author is Burmese-born poet Ko Ko Thett’s latest collection, Bamboophobia (Brookline MA: Zephyr Press, 2022). I was immediately struck by the deceptive quality of his lines, a lyric of multiple, overlapping layers presenting itself as being straightforward, but is so clearly not. Thett writes an interesting combination of direct and slant on endurance, trauma, exile and the physical and metaphysical, presenting the familiar in a way difficult to articulate: both tangible and intangible, allowing an effect of lyric smoke, cloud and pure light. “It’s a monsoon.” he writes, to open “A very special day.” “The sun is out. The sky is blue. // But for the better weather, today is no different than any / other monsoon day. today is the first waning day of the / moon. No bank holiday. // There have been several misunderstandings surrounding / today in history. What has been sacrificed? To what end? // Crazy is not nearly insane. Spot on is off the mark.” There is a particular clarity that Thett manages, to write just below the surface of the immediate moment, and of his surroundings and internal monologue, glancing off references as a way to assemble a portrait of resistance: as an articulate, empathetic and thinking human being. “It’s no coincidence that snake venom is packed with its own / counteragent.” he writes, to open the poem “The Ouroborous.” “Snakes are reptiles of repentance.”