CAMBODIAN BOY

After Marie Howe’s “The Girl”

I have reached that age where the future 
no longer interests me.

If there was a boy who went to school without worries, 
without loneliness, without desire for self-annihilation 

I was never that boy.

If I could speak to my young self I would say, 
Stop comparing your life with your cousins’.

Stop comparing your family with other families.
Try out for the soccer team. Ask Stephanie Richards out.

Take Cindy Chan to the dance. Have your heart stomped. 
Fracture your wrist. Cry. Don’t whimper.

Whatever you do, don’t bottle it all up inside.

Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian-American writer and poet. He is the author of three poetry collections. His work has appeared in World Literature Today, Copper Nickel, New York Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, diode poetry, among others. His debut novel, Koan Khmer (Curbstone Press), and his chapbook, Greatest Hits (Jacar Press), are forthcoming. He is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. Tuon teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY.