What is Left
By Bunkong Tuon
What is left after war is the gratitude for what is left.
My dreams are filled with ghosts looking for home.
The dead speak to the living through my poetry.
Each time I write, I rebuild. Retrieve what was stolen.
Nothing is dead until I let it. English is not the language
Of my birth. It is the language of death. More bombs
Dropped on Cambodia's countryside than in Hiroshima
And Nagasaki. I was bombarded by this language.
I had no choice but to use it. I stand on the precipice
Listening. Ghosts are ancestors asking for light.
I holler to celebrate the dead and the living.
Lok-Yeay and Lok-Ta, Pok and Mak, Pu and Meang,
Oum, your tongues are my tongue, and we are telling.
What is left after war is the gratitude for what is left.
Bunkong Tuon is Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is the author of several poetry
collections. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming from World Literature Today, New
York Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, The American Journal of Poetry, among
others. He is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. His debut novel, Koan Khmer, is forthcoming from
Curbstone Press. To read more about his life and writing, please visit:
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