by Leung Rachel Ka Yin

Bent shapeless, like rule of law under siege
Mute-mouthed, voiceless like ghouls, we cursed through blood,
Till midst the terror white they thieve our liege,
And towards assimilation we helplessly scud.
Some stay asleep. Many had lost their cool,
But limped on, black-shod. All enraged; all riled;
Drunk with fury; incredulous to the cruel
Violence of a government long defiled.

Gas! GAS! Quick, friends!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
Then grievously arrested for rioting crime.
Dim under the weight of ten years thick,
As under a red sea, I saw him bleeding.

In all my dreams this repeating sequence sick,
They plunge at me, beating, kicking, mocking.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could be
At the front, caught in the crosshairs,
Or thrashed by white-clad mobsters, with nowhere to flee,
Tearing, blistering, eyes and skin in profane air;
If you could hear, every night now, the blood
Come spilling from the battered bodies of the young,
Obscene as the tyrants’ idle word-game crud,
Thin as patience from the city’s wretched soul wrung-
My friend, would you still tell with such high zest
For the regime long fallen from glory,
The new truth: Dulce et decorum est
In patria mori.

Leung Rachel Ka Yin is a student of Psychology at the University of Oxford. Her poems have won awards in the Proverse Poetry Prize, Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, and her debut pamphlet is forthcoming with the Hedgehog Poetry Press in March 2020. She has been featured in the Cha Reading Series. She now serves as the Online Fiction Director of Isis Magazine and Poetry Reader at The Adroit Journal. Visit her website for more information.