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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TUOL SLENG: POL POT'S PRISON, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: Like photographs of dutch schultz which show a slick Last Line: But all I can do is make them into words. Subject(s): Cambodia; Photography & Photographers; Prisons & Prisoners | |||
Like photographs of Dutch Schultz which show a slick haired, ordinary man with unmatched eyes, there is nothing evil in this face. Pol Pot is a bland, jowly, full-lipped man. Murder. Torture. Genocide. The big words leave no mark on this small human face. His photograph has first place on these walls, mosaicked with the snapshots of the dead. Looking into the eye of the camera their eyes focus down the well of terror -- a child, his upper lip already slashed; a man grinning madness; a woman, blank faced with one tear, clasps her infant. In the presence of full face or profile or candids of the stick-limbed forced to smile up from beds of torture, I move face to face. My eyes supersede the camera. Obsessed, I feel obligated to look one by one, as though by meeting each pair of eyes I might... But all I can do is make them into words. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SECULAR GAMES by RICHARD HOWARD WHAT DID YOU SEE? by FANNY HOWE JULIA TUTWILER STATE PRISON FOR WOMEN by ANDREW HUDGINS BOTHWELL: PART 4 by WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN BOTHWELL: PART 4 by WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN WORK IN PROGRESS by CHARLES MARTIN THE SUBCULTURE OF THE WRONGLY ACCUSED by THYLIAS MOSS |
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