The Killing Fields

The monument holds sixteen shelves
of skulls and bones,
those with large blows at the front.
Teeth, rooted in the ground
and clothes strewn over and under the earth nearby,
must have been put there for effect.
But this is no intentional museum,
those teeth were recently punched out
There’s a praying mantis attached to a tree,
I’ve never seen one;
And take a photo before you point to a sign
which says; ‘the killing tree’
that children were taken to be beaten against.
The mantis and the butterfly flourish.
Purple flowers rise from the graves,
peacefully.
A tourist with a camera round his sunburned neck
asks if we’re in the Killing Fields—
I stare at him in amazement.


2006