"My Country is a Criminal", Ianna Chia
after A Disappearing World, dir. Kalyanee Mam
run the sand through your fingers and tell me
the earth isn’t dying for you. tell me this video
has “no journalistic value”, that the digging
stopped years ago. this was legal, this was
paid for, this was what built the city I now
live in. you tell me to be thankful for this crime,
this theft of a country that pieced itself into
tourist trap, into city garden swamp. tell me
to take pride in being built on mud from
the other side of the coast, my city picking
at the remains of a swamp. what are the right words
to use to grieve a land I’ve never visited,
a land I can never visit? tell me this is
is a crime in its own right.