A daughter of survivors stands in the grass among tattered military tanks. She is the only one in her family who wants to visit the museum. Siem Reap, Cambodia. Nov 2016.
“Loud little weed eater.” A worker cuts the grass and the noise activates the scene of a battlefield.
An Australian girl screams, Mum I want a bazooka! as a Japanese tourist picks up an AK-47 on display. In broken Khmer, the woman asks a museum guide/former Khmer Rouge soldier, “Why do you allow tourists to play with guns?” He smiles.
“Triggered.” The young woman hurries away from photos of the evacuation, bumps into a row of USSR armored cars.
The woman swiftly turns, jumps at a muzzle that greets her at eye level. Howitzer 105mm. M2A2. Artillery made in USA in 1953.
Closer, a lawn mower eats around the land mine exhibit.
The young woman rests next to a DK 75mm made in China, found in Anlong Veng.
Monica Sok is a Khmer American poet and the daughter of refugees. She is the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On and Year Zero, winner of a 2015 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at New York University and is a recipient of grants, fellowships, and residencies from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, Hedgebrook, Jerome Foundation, Kundiman, MacDowell, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. In 2018, she was recognized with a 92Y Discovery Prize. She has taught at Barnard College, Stanford University, and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants. She lives in New York City.
Image Description: Monica Sok, a Khmer American woman with black, shoulder-length hair, sits in front of a white concrete wall with her body angled to the right. She turns her head toward the camera and smiles slightly. She wears a blue long-sleeved shirt, a small gold pendant, and gold circle earrings.
