To the audience who asked, can poetry repair what is broken?
What is broken remains what is broken, Which is to say, breathe in the miracle Of your survival, turn that into gifts for others, this gift of yourself. Breathe in the magic. Let the source of light in.
Look around, friend. The sky remains As blue as the day you were born. Birds continue to praise. And your children need you to Show them that what remains After war must be love.
For what is the alternative?
To the Muse who Visited Me While I Was in the Shower
Do you know how precious a shower is When you have two young kids?
I was turning your lines on my tongue Like prayer when my daughter banged
On the door and you being a shy virgin Disappeared into the misty air
Taking away your secrets into the mist. Why not visit while I wait
For my son to get out of school Or when I sit in the waiting room
As my daughter does gymnastics? Why not visit when tranquility resides?
So it goes with poetry, like this morning when my girl screams as if her finger
Caught in a doorway, Screeching because there is a tiny spider
And she needs me to coax it gently into a red plastic cup, Please don’t hurt
Him, Daddy, and I’m on my hands and knees Dressed only in a bath towel,
Please don’t kill him. I look at her Sweet face and know what I must do.
Life is precious. She looks at me. No matter what, we must be grateful.
May this Poem Perform Its Magic
How I want to go back in
time and see you as you were
before you became Mak,
Lok-Yeay, our Lok-Yeay.
But there was no time
before hardship left
its fingerprints on you.
When you were a child,
your village was already
under Thai control,
you were taught to sing
their national anthem,
learn their alphabet,
stories of kings and
queens, their heroes.
When you came of age,
you had no choice of when
and whom you married.
On the first night of
being someone’s wife
you were terrified of
what men and women did
when the sun went down
and elders closed the bedroom
door. When you became
Mak, Lok-Yeay, our Lok-Yeay,
I hope you found joy
in some secret chamber.
And may this poem be
blessed with magic
and perform its sorcery:
go back in time and give you
a happy childhood,
a loving married life,
and even with the loss and grief
that came with Pol Pot,
may you found glimmers
of delight as you stood
cutting potatoes in
the Khmer Rouge
collective kitchen,
watching leaves dance
as the birds sang
only to you.
May this poem
break through to
the beyond and enliven
you in the pure love
that you gave us.
Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian American writer and critic. He is the author of several poetry collections. His writings have appeared in New York Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, The American Journal of Poetry, among others. He is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. He teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY