Our riverboat threads, lapping Cambodian tears.
The great river meridian leaps, tonguing wild woe.
Ghostly shadows of people bob where once tossed,
like in India’s Ganges, watery forks push death.

Onwards, filed fields wax greens with axes.
Serfs trowel earth, digging living mines.
Explosions never rare, nor unsheathed meat.
Fractured bones mend hell’s Mensa jigsaw puzzles.

Overturned Cambodia is mined like earthen potatoes.
Explosive purple eyes, snake out barren cupboards.
Limbless veterans drag crutch and sling for change.
Babies wail despair, wrapped in a child’s lone elbow.

The river moves through a siphon, nets strangle fish.
Irrigating rice pots rust old army issue spoons.
Silver in mouths grin mercury amalgam.
Arthritic joints without oil swell bluish channels.

Our hydrofoil surfs metallic steel, chopping waves.
Tourist money washes against slow rolling shores.
Hatched huts hover on stilts over standing swamps,
bamboo hollow as dreams, missing family.

We perch on white streamlined roof like laundry,
clothes pressing brands against open breeze.
Dark sunglasses with yellow lenses morph vision,
blues green like currency, life’s toils falsely ease.