Corpse Watching

Sarith Peou

Forward by
Ed Bok Lee
Forward
I first met Sarith Peou while conducting a poetry
workshop in the Minnesota Correctional Facility
at Stillwater, where he continues to serve two
consecutive life sentences. The only Asian in a group
of about twenty Blacks, Latinos, Indians and Whites,
he was reticent; Stillwater Poetry Group organizer,
Reggie Harris, informed that he had yet shared any
of his work, and was known to be, in general, an
extreme loner. In our first conversation, Peou spoke
of disengagement from anger. He mentioned he’d been
writing on his own, and I asked to see some of his
writings. Some weeks later, several hundred pages of
prose and poems arrived in my mailbox.

The poems in this chapbook represent only a fraction

of the author’s writings about his life in Cambodia
under the Khmer Rouge, one of the most lethal regimes
of the 20th century. Beyond telling, in total, a
personal story of devastation under Ankar, these poems
serve as steadfast interpreters for a multiplicity of
voices and intensely human emotions still seeping out
of that nation’s deepest wounds.

Indeed, as the speaker in “The Unfitted” says of one

child soldier, “He is a Khmer Rouge boy./….His name
as mysterious,/As the sound of his voice./….A French
woman asks me to interpret./….He doesn’t know what
to do with paper and pen./….Two days later he used
up the pad/….Tanks, machineguns, rocket launchers,
knives,/Rifles, mortars, landmines, dead and wounded
soldiers…” We learn another young boy is dropped
at the center. But despite the progress each boy
eventually makes toward speaking and even smiling, in
the end they will be returned to war before they are
adequately healed. The brutality is never-ending; the
complex psychology of these victims of war resides
outside the realm of any language or culture.

What strikes me about these poems is the austere

reticence pulsing through their matter-of-fact tones
and rhythms. But then, how else could you hear the
horror and genuine tragedy in the background, or
implicitly glimpse the eerie beauty and strange
humanity for yourself? I trust this voice to lead me
to what survives of the soul in an aftermath of ruined
lives.

In “My Sister Rachana,” we learn of a young girl

abducted at age seven by the Khmer Rouge to work on a
farm. When she finally returns home “….with no hair
on the top of her head./….She forced many words into
one./Her thoughts were scrambled./….

Now she is easily panicked.

Good news gives her stomach ache….

Bad news give her a panic attack.

She handles bad news
Better than good news.
 When my family learned I had survived,
When they learned I had escaped to America
Rachana developed diarrhea….

The first time I sent money home

Rachana had to be hospitalized.

We then learn the speaker has named his dog after a

cadre who mistreated his sister. “I abused that dog./I
killed and ate it.” But in the poem’s end, “Now I feel
guilty for misplacing my anger on my poor dog.”

Another striking aspect of these poems is their

humor amid absurdity. In “A Bad Shooter,” witness:
“Is someone urinating into the river?/No, my arm is
pissing blood,/….I ask my friend,/Why did you shoot my
arm?/Sorry, he says,/I aimed at your chest.”

Elsewhere, something mysterious in the cadence and

rhythm of the collection’s title poem, in which boys
watch corpses floating down a river, seems to want to
become the lyrics to a new kind of children’s song:

Corpse watching provides excitement.

Corpse watching is filled with fear.
The corpses are someone’s father, brother,
sister, mother.
Sometimes corpse watching brings tears.

Throughout, the compassion in these poems is skewed to

enter the heart through the back door, or, more often,
a broken window.
In Yeats’s words, “What can be explained is not
poetry.” The impulse driving these poems is not to
explain, nor even to understand, nor to make sense
out of the moral and ideological chaos that created
them. One gets a sense that the overriding impulse
charging these poems is first and foremost to
preserve in some solution of truth the essence of the
experience; to, literally, re-member: not only people,
places, pass-times, but actual body parts; schizoid
moments of formerly-sane personalities and psyches;
confrontations with sudden aspects of the ever-
unknowable self.

It would be too easy for the speaker to judge the

circumstances of the world in these poems. In our most
enduring literature, a speaker’s personal reflection
generally serves as a mirror for humanity’s soul. What
is most intriguing in this collection is how the poet
records the events, people, places, and then, if he
does judge, judges only himself and his relationship
to those things. When there is trauma and anger, it
is not simplistically directed at the social and
political circumstances or origins, but rather at
some more primal impulse in human nature. At best,
the poems simultaneously find themselves lost among
the dimmest, most strangely-tinted ruins of history’s
humankind.
I look forward to reading many more poems and stories
by Sarith Peou, whose true journey, I think, in that
strange and beautiful way oppressive memory can also
become literary freedom, has only just begun.

—Ed Bok Lee

THE NEW REGIME

No religious rituals.
No religious symbols.
No fortune tellers.
No traditional healers.
No paying respect to elders.
No social status. No titles.

No education. No training.
No school. No learning.
No books. No library.
No science. No technology.
No pens. No paper.

No currency. No bartering.
No buying. No selling.
No begging. No giving.
No purses. No wallets.
No human rights. No liberty.
No courts. No judges.
No laws. No attorneys.

No communications.
No public transportation.
No private transportation.
No traveling. No mailing.
No inviting. No visiting.
No faxes. No telephones.

No social gatherings.
No chitchatting.
No jokes. No laughter.
No music. No dancing.

No romance. No flirting.
No fornication. No dating.
No wet dreaming.
No masturbating.
No naked sleepers.
No bathers.
No nakedness in showers.
No love songs. No love letters.
No affection.

No marrying. No divorcing.
No marital conflicts. No fighting.
No profanity. No cursing.

No shoes. No sandals.
No toothbrushes. No razors.
No combs. No mirrors.
No lotion. No make up.
No long hair. No braids.
No jewelry.
No soap. No detergent. No shampoo.
No knitting. No embroidering.
No colored clothes, except black.
No styles, except pajamas
No wine. No palm sap hooch.
No lighters. No cigarettes.
No morning coffee. No afternoon tea.
No snacks. No desserts.
No breakfast (sometimes no dinner).

No mercy. No forgiveness.
No regret. No remorse.
No second chances. No excuses.
No complaints. No grievances.
No help. No favors.
No eyeglasses. No dental treatment.
No vaccines. No medicines.
No hospitals. No doctors.
No disabilities. No social diseases.
No tuberculosis. No leprosy.

No kites. No marbles. No rubber bands.

No cookies. No ice cream. No candy.
No playing. No toys.
No lullabies.
No rest. No vacations.
No holidays. No weekends.
No games. No sports.
No staying up late.
No newspapers.

No radio. No TV.
No drawing. No painting.
No pets. No pictures.
No electricity. No lamp oil.
No clocks. No watches.

No hope. No life.
A third of the people didn’t survive.
The regime died.
CORPSE WATCHING

The river is swollen

The current is strong
Corpses float by all day long.

Some corpses catch in the thickets

Some corpses catch in the reeds
We don’t want their spirits hanging around
So we give them the push they need.

Some corpses are tall as Caucasians

Some corpses wear blindfolds
Some corpses’ hands are tied behind their backs
Some corpses are beyond recognition.

Cadre Chhoeun* calls these corpses the CIA

Spies staying behind in Phnom Penh
Spies sabotaging the revolution
Angkar flushed them from tunnels where they’d been
Hiding like rats, he says,
But Angkar knew their plan, drove them from their
dens.

Corpse watching provides excitement.

Corpse watching is filled with fear
The corpses are someone’s father, brother, sister,
mother—
Sometimes corpse watching bring tears.

*The village chief.

FEVERS

My joints ache and chills run up and down my spine.

I’m scared: I suspect
A return of chill fevers or a bout of malaria.
Hot and cold, I shake at the same time.
The chills follow with high fever.
The fever follows with severe headaches.

Staying at camp
We are forced to work while sick.
If we can’t, they cut off our food rations.
They drag the sick out of bed.
“You are in pain whether you work or stay idle.
Therefore, you must work, because it benefits Angkar.”

I report to work in the field while sick.

I have strength to walk in the morning
Then I lie down, sick.
In the evening I feel strong enough to walk back.
My chills last longer and increase through the day.
The fever is so high, I lose consciousness.
Some days I wake up without knowing where I am.

I only remember my dreams:

Witnessing the execution of my Uncle Sovannath. He

kneels down, with his hands tied to his back, and
he lowers his head for decapitation. A KR soldier
swings a sword and cuts off his head. He cries aloud
as his head falls on the ground; his severed head
keeps talking. I feel they are going to kill me
too. So, I run for my life, to carry the bad news
to my family. On my way, the forest catches fire;
fire everywhere and I am trapped. It is so hot I am
dying. I slowly watch my skin sear. It is too hot
to bear. I wish I were dead. Suddenly a cold rain
comes. The fire burned in the cold rain. I feel
hot in the fire, and cold in the rain. Both are
unbearable.

My pants are wet and sticky.

I piss blood.
When I awake,
My neighbor tells me we are in the Chuong Leap
infirmary.
I shiver when I hear the name Chuong Leap.
There is no real treatment here.
April 17th People, like us, are left to die.
Here they send patients with TB, leprosy,
And unknown diseases for execution
At Koh Kor, just across the river.

This place is known for buried patients who still

breathe.
My neighbors tell me I would have been buried
If I were not a base person,
Because I was unconscious for a few days.
But I am an April 17th Person, not a base person.
SPIRITUAL ENEMY

Destroy the old culture.

It’s their obsession.
Defeat the enemy Before we can build a new country.

Take all the big weapons, Phum says We have a big

enemy base to destroy. We grab sledgehammers And
follow him.

We near the battlefield It’s a large Buddha statue. I

don’t want to fight this battle; My mother told me not
to defy sacred beings.

I lie. I say my stomach hurts.

Phum prefers I die in battle.
He says the statue hurts my stomach, to scare us away.
He says the statue is the enemy.

We cannot be deterred.
Your stomach ache will disappear
When the statue’s head is destroyed.
You must be patient.

Phum runs head-first,

Brandishes a sledgehammer,
Swings it like a round house.
He swings and swings, unceasing.

The Buddha’s head falls off

And my stomach ache seems real
But the statue does not cause my pain, phum recants.

Phum prefers I fight the enemy.

I insist I am sick
When sends me back to camp
I am reborn.
SCARS

While we starve
In short pants and bare feet,
We grind stones with hammers.
The sharp chips target our legs and feet.
Our cuts become infected.
We receive no useful treatment.

Angkar takes pleasure in our pain.

If we don’t report to work,
They order us to have our wounds cleaned.
Their untrained nurses mutilate our wounds with
sticks.
We are all cleansed with the same bucket of boiled,
sour leaves.
Our wounds are sprinkled with human ashes.
Many of us contract hepatitis.

Inability to walk is no excuse to miss work.

Some of us crawl to work.
Our wounds hurt most at night,
But we are not allowed to moan;
The Khmer Rouge says our suffering is never enough,
Compared to their soldiers in battle.

While working, our wounds open and bleed.

Flies swarm at us like dead bodies.
One hand works the hammer;
One hand swats at flies in our wounds.
The flies suck blood and pus.
The flies lay eggs in our open sores.
Our wounds are infested with maggots.

When our wounds widen,

We call them craters:
T-28, F-111, or B-52
Based on size and depth.
My B-52 didn’t heal until the Khmer Rouge fell,
When we had enough food to eat.
THE TORMENT

Late in the morning, the guard comes,

Collects me for interrogation.
I pay close attention
When he kicks me and shouts.

In the chamber of torture, I pray.

I pray to a god I no longer believe in.
I pray to see my family again.

My arms are secured behind me,

My body secured to a chair,
“Why did your betray Angkar?”
They interrogate me.

My denial earns a hard slap.

“Think harder; answer carefully!”
They display a cane and an electric cable.
“Which one do you like?”
The rules:
Delay—get hit with the cane.
Lie—get hit with the cable.
Moan—get hit more.
Refuse—get my fingernails plucked off.

They make the rules but they don’t follow them.

They slap, kick, and punch,
My head, my face and my ribcage
Before, during and after each question.

The answers I give don’t satisfy them.

The information is not even useful to them.
The beating is not necessary.
They hurt me just for the joy of seeing me in pain.

I try agreeing with them:

Yes, I tried to sabotage Angkar’s plan.
Yes, I purposefully broke tools, shovels, and hoes.
Yes, I pretended to be sick to miss work.
Yes, I committed terrorist insurgent acts.

My suffering does not satisfy them.

They let me ride the cut wings.
The hanging rope tied to my arms behind me
They kick away the step stool.

My arms nearly rip from my shoulders.

They laugh.
“He looks like an airplane with broken wings.”
They beat me with a stick.

I wake up on the floor.

A bucket of water splashed on my face.
They don’t know I’m awake,
And they take me back to the jailhouse to shackle my
feet.
MY FAVORITE COUSIN

A few female cadres

Walk at her sides.
The group looks so serious,
Perhaps Sitha knows why.

“Sitha! Sitha!”
I call out her name.
Her eyes do not see,
No answer comes.

Perhaps she doesn’t want

Her cadre friends to know
She and I are related.
Disappointed, I go.

“Do you know that Sitha

was taken away
For execution?” Vorn asks me.
No, there’s no way!
I have just seen her
Walking with friends.
“You stupid,” Vorn shouts,
“Where have you been?

They were taking her to Koh Kor,

You know what I mean.
The place where life stops,
Her ‘friends,’ not what they seem.”

What did she do wrong?

The innocent soul.
“They saw her speaking English
With an old friend I know.”

Twenty years later,

I still see her that way.
Lost and distraught
As she was on that day.
SUON SOKHA

Angkar is there.
Sokha and I are there,
Taking turns digging the canal,
Taking turns carrying dirt.

To build Angkar’s new dike.

I shoulder the yoke.
Only two more trips
And I’ll exchange the yoke
For Sokha’s shovel.

My ears go dead,
And I learn to fly
Up, down, onto my back.
I still have arms and legs,
I can swim in the crimson stream
Pumping from Sokha’s neck,
His eyes glare straight at me.
Bubbles build a red pyramid
In the hole, in his throat.

My hand plugs the hole,

He wants to speak, nothing.
Mit Srun: “Useless! He won’t live.”
My hands, my body, tremble.
Sokha dies.

Workers stop, watch, listen;

Angkar commands, “Get back to work!”
Angkar commands, “Do not slow down!”
“When the enemy kills one of our soldiers,
We must fight harder!”

I grab the yoke, hurry,

Carry dirt while my legs wobble,
And my hands are slick with the blood,
The blood of my friend.
We must fight harder.
A GOOD CADRE

Cadres gather to make sweet porridge.

Dessert is a word for the KR elites,
But my stomach listens,
Grumbles and keeps me awake.
My stomach decides to steal some young coconuts
And forces me to climb a twenty-five meter tree.
It fights me, and my hands slip.
It scratches my arms and chest
But I learn about this enemy quickly
And reach the top, seize two coconuts
Until one escapes.
My life falls with it.
Re-education, prison, possible execution
A dessert cadre yells, “ a coconut fell!”
They send a girl,
I descend the tree, but not quick enough.
The girl stares at the green coconut.
She blurts out softly, “Thief.”
“No! I’m no a thief, don’t yell.”
“It’s my coconut, please let me have it.”
She runs back to the house, without saying a word,
Without flashing the light on my face.
She saves me without even seeing my face.
A very rare cadre, I’m moved by her sympathy.
I wish I had seen her face so I that I knew who she
was
But I remember her voice, vividly, in my head.
UNCLE VENG

Abandoned now, the jungle worksite,

The place thousands of people once occupied,
Once performed forced-labor under sun and rain.
It is silent, not a bird chirps.

No one returns to let the past confront them,

Except a hysterical widow and her frightened nephew.
They try to exhume her husband
Who was brutally murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

I dig and dig, several spots.

We can’t find him.
My aunt lights some incenses and prays:

My beloved husband,
I have come to invite you back home.
Please show us where you are
and do not play with my mind.
 I come with peace,
please let me find you with peace,
let me go home with you in peace.

She wails and wails.

Soon an old man appears.

“What are you two doing in this deserted place?”
We tell him our story, and he shows us the right spot.
The spot where the soil is depressed.

The old man’s face is familiar,

But I don’t know his name.
Perhaps, I think, the old man is a ghost sent by my
uncle.

I am in a spiritual realm.
I am not sure if I am me.
I try to give myself a reality test.
If I am I, what is my name?
Who are my parents?
Where do I live?
Who am I? Why am I here?

I am still not sure about myself.

I promise myself:
If, while digging, my uncle rises in person,
I will leave my aunt behind and run for my life.

I also pray silently

That we will never find his bones,
So we will go home.
My aunt will bring more people next time.

I begin to shake when my hoe hits a bone.

My aunt wails hard.
She jumps into her husband’s grave!
She grasps the bone with both hands,
And embraces it against her chest.
She wails:

My beloved husband,
When people told me you were killed,
I lost my mind. I wanted to go with you,
But I was concerned about our children.
It was painful enough for them to lose their
father.
And I would just hurt them more if they also lost
their mother.
Please forgive me for not going with you.
I wanted to but I couldn’t.
I always think of you. With greatest pain,
I think of your arrest; I think of when they
tortured you to death
and created a rumor that you had committed
suicide.
I didn’t believe them because many people had
seen your body,
And they saw your brutal injuries
 That could not come from hanging yourself.
Please forgive me for not mourning enough
For your death. The enemy would have killed me
if I did.
I was not afraid of dying, as I told you,
But I worried about our young children.

She never wants to leave his grave.

The old man has to physically restrain her
So I can finish the exhuming.

The old man helps with a cremation ritual.

I pray to any sacred being in the universe,
To help me through this horrifying experience,
To bring me back home safely.

I am reborn when we get home.

My relatives still recognize me,
My relatives talk to me normally.
It is good to be normal again.
MY SISTER RANCHANA

When she was seven, the Khmer Rouge took her.

They took her from her home and mother.
They took her to a work farm.

At the work farm, she made mistakes.

She wet her bed,
Cried for her mom at night,
She didn’t complete the day’s work.

Her punishments were many: she was beaten,

Locked in a dark, concrete staircase,
Deprived of sleep,
Deprived of food.

They forced her to carry cow dung on her head.

When the Khmer Rouge fell,
She returned home with no hair on the top of her
head.
When she came home,
We didn’t understand her words.
She forced many words into one.
Her thoughts were scrambled.

She could not learn in school.

She never passed first grade.

Now she panics easily.

Good news gives her a stomach ache
And diarrhea.
Bad news gives her a panic attack.
She handles bad news
Better than good news.

When my family learned I had survived,

When they learned I had escaped to America,
Rachana developed diarrhea,
And had to be hospitalized.
The first time I sent money home
Rachana had to be hospitalized.

The first time I visited Cambodia

Rachana had to be hospitalized.

That was twenty years after the Khmer Rouge.

Mee was the name of the cadre who mistreated

Rachany.
I named my new dog Mee.
I abused that dog.
I killed and ate it.

A few months later

Mee died from delivery complications.
I thought my curse had worked.

Now I feel guilty for misplacing my anger on my

poor dog.
A BAD SHOOTER

Our rafts are moored

As we trans­­port bamboo
Along the Basak River.
Some thieves are stealing our bamboo.
In the dark and drizzling rain,
I must inspect the ropes.
Before me, a flash of light:
BANG! My right arm swings backward.
“IT’S ME, MOTHERFUCKER,” I scream.
Is someone urinating into the river?
No, my arm is pissing blood around its shattered
bone.
Who says a bullet doesn’t hurt!
I ask my friend,
“Why did you shoot my arm?”
“Sorry,” he says,
“I aimed at your chest.”
THE UNFITTED
He is Khmer Rouge boy.
That’s what we call him.
His name is as mysterious;
As the sound of his voice.
He doesn’t speak.

He is brought to the TMC:

Traditional Medicine Center,
In a Khmer Rouge uniform.
That fits
His fourteen-year-old frame.

A French woman asks me to interpret.

I am the interpreter.
I look at the boy.
I look at the woman.
I translate the woman’s words into Cambodian.

No reply, no gestures, no expressions.

Is the boy also deaf? I wonder.
I wonder why the woman keeps trying.
Is she crazy?
Trying…trying…trying…

She gives him a notepad and a pen.

He is a Khmer Rouge boy;
He doesn’t know what to do with paper and pen.
I just interpret.
I am the interpreter.

Two days later, he used up the pad.

I am stunned.
How skillfully the Khmer Rouge boy draws!
Tanks, machineguns, rocket launchers, knives,
Rifles, mortars, landmines, dead and wounded
soldiers…

Another young boy is dropped at the TMC.

He is crazy boy.
That’s what we call him.
His name is a mystery.
So is the sound of his voice.

He moves about constantly.

Even at night
He wanders around the TMC yard.
He is easy to interpret to;
He ignores us, walks away.

After a few weeks, crazy boy speaks,

But only to ask for food.
A few more weeks, crazy boy sings Thai songs.
He dances when people ask him to.
His name and story remain unspoken.

An SUV arrives to return crazy boy to the border.

His permitted time for treatment ends.
He stops talking again
when he learns he must return to the war.

Seeing crazy boy talk,

We hope the Khmer Rouge boy will also talk.
Soon he begins to smile.
Then he begins to speak slowly.
His time for treatment also expires.
He, too, must return to the war,
Before he fully recovers.
Born in 1962, Sarith Peou is a survivor of the
Khmer Rouge genocide (1975-1979) in which an
estimated 2 million people - more than one-
quarter of the Khmer population - were killed. 
In 1982, Sarith escaped Cambodia, and fled to a
refugee camp in Thailand, where he worked as an
interpreter and cultural informant as part of
a mental health program.  In 1987, he resettled
in southern California, and, in 1993, he moved
to Minnesota. In both States, Sarith worked in
mental health programs as a counselor and case
manager.  His life was disrupted by a then-
undiagnosed emotional disorder and, in 1996, he
was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced
Church.  This inspired him to build a new life of
integrity and service to Go to two consecutive
life sentences incarcerated at Minnesota
Correctional Facility-Stillwater. Sarith is a
model prisoner.  While incarcerated, he came in
contact with the program of Moral Re-Armament and
was subsequently converted to the Christian d and
to others.  He earned a GED and an Associate of
Arts degree. Since 2000, he has worked as a tutor
in the prison’s literacy program.  He is active
in Restorative Justice, a program that promotes
accountability, taking responsibility and making
amends toward repairing the harm done by crime. 
He has dedicated his life to education, and moral
and spiritual transformation within the prison. 
He is completing his autobiography, tentatively
titled Prison Without Walls, to be published in
the near future.
Tinfish Press
Copyright 2006
Tinfish Press
Susan M. Schultz, editor
47-728 Hui Kelu St. #9
Kane`ohe, HI 96744
Tinfishpress.com