Khmer New
The stupa rises, clear glass, like a hundred-foot bottle of beer
though stone-cornered and capped. And dry, except for the skulls.
Nine thousand of them, rising tiers; each blooms
a sick yellow, gray, or brown. No sheen clothes
them with halos. They did not die in the war:
just beasts thrown in pits. And above it all, children sing
oblivious to the death-garden next to their school. Mosquitoes sing
in the tourists’ ears, attracted to the sweat, like beer.
The pests’ forerunners starved. The butchers made war
with DDT: not on insects, but on stinking skulls
and bodies—dead, or nearly so. Shreds of the victims’ clothes—
pink, yellow, blue—now push from the graves like blooms.
Two-thirds of the graves are exhumed after a new state blooms.
The stupa’s foundation is built. Cauldrons encroach: burning logs sing
like witches. The diggers will burn their own clothes
to excise the beefy scent. The brew froths like beer
or piss. All avoid stirring: faces surface. They boil skulls,
stripping them clean for tourists, who soon war
over price with guides. One guide has a side-market: war
flowers. “Sir, a dollar for some lovely war blooms
to offer at the stupa?” White Tiger skulls
smirk on the guides’ green umbrellas while benches sing,
in red and gold, the wonders of Angkor Beer.
Many sport Angkor Wat in gold and crimson on their clothes,
unmasking Tiger Beer as an upstart. One cannot buy clothes
advertising the green Tiger at the souvenir shop. The war
rages across the country between Angkor and Tiger Beer,
unperturbed by landmines that dot Cambodia like blooms.
The sexy youths in the commercials can’t hear the hoes sing
through the air here at Choeung Ek, burying themselves in skulls
like young men in women’s bodies. One grave has no skulls
only women’s bones, and no clothes.
No one here ever had a bullet sing
into their ear: there might have been another war,
and bullets were too precious to waste. Red blooms
on the TV: “You can’t waste a drop of Angkor Beer!”
- Alex Darr