Where’s the List Kept and Who Ticks Off the Orders?

The secret menu of genocide used to be a secret, once.

Where’s the list kept and who ticks off the orders?

The rest of us would sit and wonder: how was this allowed to happen?

We thought, No, it wasn’t allowed. Mad men made men go mad.

Where’s the list kept and who ticks off the orders?

But now, like celebrity chefs on TV,

The hungry higher ups of the FREE WORLD
Put their aprons on and wash their hands

Before they carve up Palestine

Neverminding the blood that drips off their wrist

Where’s the list

Where’s the list kept and who ticks off the orders?

They do it so openly. O! The atrocity

Is more exhibition than execution. O No!

It’s both, sir. It’s both.

Where’s the list

Where’s the list kept

Who ticks off the orders?

The list is kept in the heart of that child

Who saw their parents gunned to strips

And the orders are ticked by the hand

Who can never grasp who or what that child is.

---

Sameen Shakya’s writings have been published in Alternate Route, Cosmic Daffodil, Hearth and Coffin, Roi Faineant and Thin Veil Press, to name a few. Born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, he moved to the USA in 2015 to pursue writing. He earned an Undergraduate Degree in Creative Writing from St Cloud State University and traveled the country for a couple of years to gain a more informal education. He returned to Kathmandu in 2022 and is currently based there.