All right.
So Yeah, lots of research I've done over the last 10 years,
mostly digging through declassified materials,
going out to the National Security Archive at George
Washington University to dig through more declassified
materials, but to actually be able to hold
a lot of these relics in my hand,
too, because they had them all in these file boxes.
It was really just incredible to come across all this material.
This next poem is about escape and how people escape
and under what circumstances could one escape.
Case Studies In Escape, Post 1975.
"One.
Hmong Village Chief.
Five times your village was forced to roam, restless
and uprooted by eyes of the regime
to settle in the Ban Don Valley.
Wise ones taken to seminar meant this was a land of rules.
No farming in the lowlands.
No contact with the locals.
No hunting within the forests.
No trade outside the settlement.
No clinics.
No schools.
No elders allowed to spirit lead.
Monitored by 2 officials and a brigade.
Then it happened.
The first attack in 1979.
Source saw a plane fly over and then saw
yellow sugar on farm plants.
Once more, December 1980, until no more withstanding.
February 1981.
Permission granted to move the village once more.
And this time you broke free.
77 families to the Mekong.
13 day walk.
3.
A Former Hmong Captain in the Royal Lao Army.
You averted your fate in a cleansing camp.
People never came back.
If only you were quick as deer, atmospheric as bird, small as
beetle to hide in the Earth.
25 relatives gone to the gas.
More had been forsaken without shield.
Eating roots and grass for the last six months.
Children and old people who can no longer walk
are abandoned in a cave in the forest."