January 2016
Bunkong Tuon
bunkong.tuon@gmail.com
bunkong.tuon@gmail.com
I teach writing and literature at Union College, in Schenectady, NY. I came to writing when I was a college dropout in Southern California, where I discovered Charles Bukowski in a small library on Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach, CA. After that, I went back to school and got my degrees. I went into academia because I knew what hunger was and I didn’t want to play the role of the starving artist. In my graduate school and pre-tenure years, I wrote poetry and memoirs on the side, publishing peer-reviewed articles and secretly sharing the creative stuff only with friends and trusted colleagues. Now, I’m back in the writing business in full force, and I feel invigorated, alive, and very happy because of it.
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Author's Note: My family left Cambodia in 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime fell. Under Pol Pot’s communist regime (1975-79), Cambodia lost about 1.7 million lives, that was twenty percent of its population, to execution, starvation, forced labor, and sickness. As the poem “Under the Tamarind” depicts, I lost my mother to the Khmer Rouge when I was very young. I was raised in the United States by my grandmother, uncles, and aunts. These poems are my homage to them—whom I see as courageous, hardworking, resilient, and driven by the powerful forces of love for the family. |
Under the Tamarind Tree
The child sits on the lap
of his aunt, under the old tamarind tree
outside the family home.
The tree stands still, quiet,
indifferent. The house sways
on stilts.
Monks in saffron robes,
and nuns with shaved heads,
lips darkened with betel-nut stain,
sit chanting prayers
for the child’s mother.
Incense perfumes the hot dry air.
There emerges a strange familiar song
between the child and his aunt that day—
a distant one, melodic but harsh,
as if the strings are drawn too tight—
Each time the child hears prayers
coming from the house, he cries;
each time he cries, the aunt, a girl herself,
pinches the boy’s thigh.
First Snow
We huddled
behind the back door
of our sponsor’s house.
My uncle, the bravest
because he spoke a little English,
went out.
My grandmother, aunts,
and I watched him
through the kitchen window.
He bent down, reached for
the whiteness of this new world,
and put some in his mouth.
He looked back at us and smiled,
“We can make snow cone with this!”
America, the miraculous, our savior,
you were the land of dreams then.
Our Secret
Back in the day, we must have looked really strange
to onlookers. When the light changed, we crossed
the street, a caravan of two—an old lady
pushing a cart filled with empty soda cans
and beer bottles, followed aimlessly by a thin boy,
about eight or nine years old, with a protruding stomach
and a clear plastic bag filled with more cans and bottles.
On those summer days, we scavenged the trash
cans along the shoreline of Revere Beach,
where the Americans sunbathed in their scanty
swimwear, and, to our amazement, tried
to get a sun tan, trying to brown their skin like ours,
trying to look like farmers from the countryside.
We should have told them our secret:
Walk in the sun all day
collecting empty bottles and cans;
Walk, don’t drive, to a nearby liquor store,
and wait in line (with shame on your face
and dark syrup clinging to your fingers)
as the cashier lady counts the bottles and cans,
as disgruntled beachgoers wait in line behind us.
We never made enough money
to justify the shame I felt, but Grandmother
was always proud to take home the $15.75.
Fishing for Trey Platoo
You might have seen them
fishing on the shores of the Cape Cod Canal:
My uncle in his fisherman’s hat
pulling in a one-foot scup, my aunt in her pajama-like
pants walking backward up the bike path,
snapping a line that’s got stuck between the rocks,
my other aunt reeling in a sea bass
her husband by her side directing.
Bikers, joggers, teenagers and their dates,
families with their children look curiously on.
Or maybe you have seen them
lining up all three sides of a pier in Salem,
their wrists jerking in a language
that bewitches the squids below.
They are not the only ones.
Other Cambodians and Vietnamese, once enemies,
fish side by side on the same American pier.
Other immigrants, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese
speaking languages that I can’t understand, come together
on this spot: sacred rods in hands, beckoning the squid.
Or maybe you have seen them
under a bridge fishing the Providence River,
looking for trey platoo, a type of mackerel
like they used to eat in the refugee camps in Thailand.
Sometimes, my aunts and uncles run into an old friend
from those long ago days. They talk about the lack
of food, of sneaking out at night to fish, and of running,
always running, from the Thai police.
They exchange phone numbers, share fishing secrets,
and set up a time and place where they’ll fish together again.
When they get home, my aunts gut the fish,
clean them, fry them, and put them in boiling stew
of galangal, lemongrass, and kaffir leaves.
My uncles and aunts sit in a circle on the floor,
eat, and tell stories of how this fish got away
or how one of them got caught by the Thai police.
No matter how hard they try, they can never understand
why my cousin and I ever bother with fishing—
Why we catch and release food, as if it’s some sport.
Thanksgiving Farewell
Grandma is holding my wife’s hand:
Take care of each other.
He doesn’t have any parents.
I’ve taken care of him
since his mother passed
away under Pol Pot.
Grandma sobs and turns to me:
Tell her. Speak for me.
She places my hand on top of my wife’s:
You. He. Take care.
Seeing our stunned faces, she repeats.
You. He. Take care. OK?
I give her a hug and say in Khmer:
There’s no need to cry, Lok-Yiey.
We’ll be back for Christmas.
Credits: “Under the Tamarind Tree” was first published in Numéro Cinq. “Thanksgiving Farewell” was first published in Numéro Cinq.“Fishing for Trey Platoo” was first published in Gruel (NYQ Books, 2015) “Our Secret” was first published in Gruel (NYQ Books, 2015). “First Snow” was first published in Misfit Magazine.
The child sits on the lap
of his aunt, under the old tamarind tree
outside the family home.
The tree stands still, quiet,
indifferent. The house sways
on stilts.
Monks in saffron robes,
and nuns with shaved heads,
lips darkened with betel-nut stain,
sit chanting prayers
for the child’s mother.
Incense perfumes the hot dry air.
There emerges a strange familiar song
between the child and his aunt that day—
a distant one, melodic but harsh,
as if the strings are drawn too tight—
Each time the child hears prayers
coming from the house, he cries;
each time he cries, the aunt, a girl herself,
pinches the boy’s thigh.
First Snow
We huddled
behind the back door
of our sponsor’s house.
My uncle, the bravest
because he spoke a little English,
went out.
My grandmother, aunts,
and I watched him
through the kitchen window.
He bent down, reached for
the whiteness of this new world,
and put some in his mouth.
He looked back at us and smiled,
“We can make snow cone with this!”
America, the miraculous, our savior,
you were the land of dreams then.
Our Secret
Back in the day, we must have looked really strange
to onlookers. When the light changed, we crossed
the street, a caravan of two—an old lady
pushing a cart filled with empty soda cans
and beer bottles, followed aimlessly by a thin boy,
about eight or nine years old, with a protruding stomach
and a clear plastic bag filled with more cans and bottles.
On those summer days, we scavenged the trash
cans along the shoreline of Revere Beach,
where the Americans sunbathed in their scanty
swimwear, and, to our amazement, tried
to get a sun tan, trying to brown their skin like ours,
trying to look like farmers from the countryside.
We should have told them our secret:
Walk in the sun all day
collecting empty bottles and cans;
Walk, don’t drive, to a nearby liquor store,
and wait in line (with shame on your face
and dark syrup clinging to your fingers)
as the cashier lady counts the bottles and cans,
as disgruntled beachgoers wait in line behind us.
We never made enough money
to justify the shame I felt, but Grandmother
was always proud to take home the $15.75.
Fishing for Trey Platoo
You might have seen them
fishing on the shores of the Cape Cod Canal:
My uncle in his fisherman’s hat
pulling in a one-foot scup, my aunt in her pajama-like
pants walking backward up the bike path,
snapping a line that’s got stuck between the rocks,
my other aunt reeling in a sea bass
her husband by her side directing.
Bikers, joggers, teenagers and their dates,
families with their children look curiously on.
Or maybe you have seen them
lining up all three sides of a pier in Salem,
their wrists jerking in a language
that bewitches the squids below.
They are not the only ones.
Other Cambodians and Vietnamese, once enemies,
fish side by side on the same American pier.
Other immigrants, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese
speaking languages that I can’t understand, come together
on this spot: sacred rods in hands, beckoning the squid.
Or maybe you have seen them
under a bridge fishing the Providence River,
looking for trey platoo, a type of mackerel
like they used to eat in the refugee camps in Thailand.
Sometimes, my aunts and uncles run into an old friend
from those long ago days. They talk about the lack
of food, of sneaking out at night to fish, and of running,
always running, from the Thai police.
They exchange phone numbers, share fishing secrets,
and set up a time and place where they’ll fish together again.
When they get home, my aunts gut the fish,
clean them, fry them, and put them in boiling stew
of galangal, lemongrass, and kaffir leaves.
My uncles and aunts sit in a circle on the floor,
eat, and tell stories of how this fish got away
or how one of them got caught by the Thai police.
No matter how hard they try, they can never understand
why my cousin and I ever bother with fishing—
Why we catch and release food, as if it’s some sport.
Thanksgiving Farewell
Grandma is holding my wife’s hand:
Take care of each other.
He doesn’t have any parents.
I’ve taken care of him
since his mother passed
away under Pol Pot.
Grandma sobs and turns to me:
Tell her. Speak for me.
She places my hand on top of my wife’s:
You. He. Take care.
Seeing our stunned faces, she repeats.
You. He. Take care. OK?
I give her a hug and say in Khmer:
There’s no need to cry, Lok-Yiey.
We’ll be back for Christmas.
Credits: “Under the Tamarind Tree” was first published in Numéro Cinq. “Thanksgiving Farewell” was first published in Numéro Cinq.“Fishing for Trey Platoo” was first published in Gruel (NYQ Books, 2015) “Our Secret” was first published in Gruel (NYQ Books, 2015). “First Snow” was first published in Misfit Magazine.
©2016 Bunkong Tuon