In Cambodia the kids had never
heard of the Holocaust; in Thailand
they thought Hitler was a god. They
knew Drupal and di Caprio, the shopping-
malls with name-brand goods come all
the way from China. Musselmen on boats
kept drowning, but iced poppies were still
bursting like bubbles of necrosis in the
high skies over the Golden Triangle.
Further south, and west, they had
their own pariahs, but the failed imperial
glories only proved the rise of the prophet
in his flawless canter through time. Space
was only a densely-peopled matter of time
as well, his promise a foregone conclusion.
Sweatshop illegals in the
hinterlands could fill in the blanks, if the
capital wasn’t forthcoming. To become
a state secret was not always a fate to
malign; look how many of them
had made history.
whispered lineage 