How to Defeat Pol Pot
Call your children by their true names.
Love. Divine. Angels. My heart.
Be gentle with them.
Speak the truth:
They were born out of love.
These divine creatures.
Tell them the Angkor Empire stood
for six hundred years.
America is half that age.
Read to them Khmer poetry.
Show them Apsaras dancing on temple walls.
Pick up a paintbrush, play an instrument.
Let the soul sing its songs.
The Khmer Rouge made angels of us all.
We soared over killing fields
to find home on foreign shores.
Keep memories of the victims in songs and prayers,
in the spoonful of rice we feed our children.
Sing to the moon for what it witnessed.