Editor’s Choice Award Winner: David Oliveira
David Oliveira has published three volumes of poetry—the most recent, Still Life With Coffee (Brandenburg Press). He is included in several noted anthologies, among them: California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University); The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese American Poetry (Brown University, 2012); and How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets (Heyday Books), which he edited with Christopher Buckley and M.L. Williams. He lives and writes on the banks of the Mekong River, near Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Thong Vichheka Returns To Cambodia, November 1997
For Vic, for so long, his homeland existed as
memories, stories, photos, a dictionary.
This trip was his time to experience again
those dear places held in sounds and smells and landscapes
in the beloved country, longed for with each sun,
kept in full breaths used to pace the lapsing days.
―――
The beautiful city was gone, replaced by husks
that barely recalled what stood there before.
His home, planned by his mother, now someone else’s.
His old school, deserted for years, a school again,
though roof and walls in desperate need of repair.
His family stupa at the family wat,
commandeered for a new family’s devotions.
Generations of ashes discarded somewhere.
And so it went, place after place around town.
Yet, here he was—unthinkable just days ago—
and where others might have felt sadness and dismay,
he felt elation searching for family, friends.
Finding one led to one more who led to one more;
each one found making the party more delicious.
―――
Khmer people do not dwell in the past; their language
speaks only in the present tense. Of course, their lives
feel each nuance of fits in time, like everyone;
and like everyone, their broken hearts wear scars from
cracks chiseled into them by life’s atrocities.
But Khmer thinking insists:
today is where we’ve come; what can we do with it?
This seemingly evolved outlook does not make them
better, just less stressed with the world’s toxic temper.
Like the rest of humankind, they’ve seen it before,
and worse, and recently, and expect it again.
―――
As days passed, Vic traveled through boyhood memories,
time going too quickly to stop for reflection.
Everywhere he went he found people to talk to
in one of three languages. Stories from times past.
Stories from times present. But most of the stories
explained life in his new country and his good luck.
When time came to fly back, he stared out the window,
only he knows at what, as the plane lifted off
and the city collapsed into a smaller self,
then all at once vanished from sight, his grip loosened
on the emotional chain he held so tight for
twenty-five years, finally breaking into tears
over the few things still there and countless things not.
