Choeung Ek — Killing Fields
Poetry
I wrote this a few days after visiting mass graves at ‘Choeung Ek’ — better known as the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It was an incredibly disturbing experience, but also a worthwhile reminder of the staggering cruelty we are capable of.
Blood, bones, stray fabric
An overflowing receptacle of misery
Strangers bound together
In the afterlife
By their false confessions
And stories of torture
Thousands packed together in parity
No place for hierarchy here
The irony of their classlessness in death
Should please the perpetrators of these crimes
Skulls dutifully sorted and marked
Complex identities
Reduced to gender, age group and
How the final blow of death was delivered
By knife, axe, stick
Or in the case of babies
Their heads smashed against an unsuspecting tree
That’ll surely do it
That will put those cherubic revenge-seekers in their place
