PEAULADD HUY

Peauladd Huy was born in Phnom Penh. Her latest work, published by Connotation Press: An Online Artifact was nominated for the Sundress "Best of the Net," the Dzanc "Best of the Net," and the Pushcart Prize. And with deep gratitude to Connotation Press she’ll have a book, forthcoming soon.

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              Water 



Think of a river 
The water is not named

From every depth it runs
Water is water

The river is not without
Its flow. Its life--

The life of a creature is in the blood
When he enters the water reddens--

You are not wrong: blood is thicker than water,
If permissible, blood can float a river

And what remains 
A river are found. 



               To Purpose


Where I can be of most use?
I can be the pit the rain 

Pools after they emptied and filled, 
The flood now sits over the rice plains, 

The great lake stars 
Space like eyes on the moon 

Tonight. The moon. The moon 
(What can I say?). Sometimes light I can see 

Flickering over the water they are watching. 
It returns like a missing father. Staggering

Bruised night to night, in various shades of light 
Eaten by a monster 

Darkness in my nightmares.     
Nightmare. Nightmare 

And nightmaring (what to say about it): 
It is an eye. Opening 

The theatrical darkness I’ve entered, not once 
Was I permitted to be bored

With his torture, his resourcefulness to disguise
And ambush—the gnat is not always a gnat, the spider,

The web, the young girl looking on the garden
Of white lotuses suddenly turns bone-white 

Genocide, those rice fields: when will they stop 
This constant façade over these years 

Old bones, scaffolding with every intricate 
Part I am to them? In this blank space, this vacant dark wall 

Spanning a grotesque mirror and its flat face, the moon I see
The children following, me not far, breathless with questions, my mother and her death 

Camp of mothers calling here and there: Are they there? 
Are they here? in the corner 

Back I first did not see. Are they too, they still have hidden in rice 
Acreages, I am to appeal for (to poetry of all)? 

Now dirty bits broken up and stuck together (they too don’t want 
A whole mirror regarding such images distorting their perfect poetry).

So I’m torn once and twice (are we right 
Calling on the service of others

To view our deaths?) Once committed; twice visited 
(Day and night); and three times I am real

Real is real to disguise 
You all amongst night 

Trees, blooms as common as rain, flood and fog 
Fields, my mind

(You all’s actually) in voices of petals and leaves 
Falling, faces cut features—a human collage

Of planetary deaths: can you see 
One’s falling dark a million stars are shown?