Dave Bonta's poem moves through three loosely linked scenes, and the connections are left for the reader to work out. It opens with a question about power: who would the great leaders actually punish, and why does fear feel like a game to them? The second stanza answers in a cold, bureaucratic tone. Poor people are "examined as suspected persons," picked out for torture. The language sounds official, which makes the cruelty feel routine.
Then the poem shifts to an image of a "mother crow" who, at a strange hour, asks who "we" are. She seems to stand for a watching, questioning authority, or perhaps a protective figure turned unsettling. Her face, "full of black rain," ends the poem with a poisonous, ominous picture. Judging by the imagery, the mood is bleak and uneasy. The speaker seems wary and angry at how fear is used against the powerless, and the final image leaves a feeling of dread rather than any resolution.