BunKong Tuon, featured in the new Ocean State Review

A Hole in My Stomach

History is a wheel that spits
Us out without regret.
That was what the Khmer Rouge taught.
And when the wheel of history
Was done with my family
I was left with a hole in my stomach.
My navel a gaping mouth.
I have been filling this hole with
The soil of memories and a child’s desires.
I water it with stories and poems
Until I am full and warm.
In the back, in the dark,
Of a summer night sky
Starts shine
On this hole in my stomach.
I look down at it and call it mine.
In the dark, in the night,
I feed it with songs orphans sing.
In the night, under the bright stars,
I look at this hole and call it home.

Bunkong Tuon on “A Hole in My Stomach“:

I was thinking of my grief as a result of the Cambodian Genocide and, also, of how as a literary critic, I have analyzed books about the genocide and argued that writing helps survivors recover from trauma. Similarly, many years now, I have been trying to heal myself through writing. I have slowly come to the realization that healing and closure are not possible for me, especially when such losses occurred early in my childhood. There is this scar that I have, this “hole in my stomach,” and I just have to learn to acknowledge and accept that it will always be a part of me.  

Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian American writer, Pushcart Prize–winning poet, and professor who teaches at Union College in Schenectady, in NY. His work has appeared in World Literature Today, Copper Nickel, New York Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, diode poetry, Verse Daily, among others. His Greatest Hits chapbook, What Is Left, was published by Jacar Press in March 2024. His debut novel, Koan Khmer, was published by Northwestern/Curbstone Press in August 2024. He is poetry editor of Cultural Daily.