When your mother was in high school and she needed help with her world history homework, I remember her textbook having one singular sentence in it about Cambodia, in a section about the world’s worst genocides. “In Cambodia during the 1970s, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge orchestrated the murder of three million people.” The book fixated solely on our devastation and not on our joys. It didn’t mention anything about Angkor Wat, a temple of hand-carved stone depicting our folklore and history, one of the seven wonders of the world. It didn’t mention that before the Khmer Rouge killed them, our country was home to painters and weavers, actors and musicians, our cities bursting with culture and beauty. My favorite Khmer singer was Sinn Sisamouth, the “King of Khmer music.” He was awfully popular, being compared to the likes of Frank Sinatra and Elvis. At the donut shop, I had a customer named Mabel who always ordered maple bars because they sounded like her name. Mabel was a bistro waitress by day and a jazz singer by night, playing walking bass lines while scatting to Aretha Franklin songs. She came around so often that once she invited me and your Yeh Yeh to one of her performances. The earthiness of her voice brought a smile to my face. It was a hard thing to swallow, the idea that Sinn Sisamouth and all the other musicians and artists died for something as simple as singing, something with the purpose of bringing people joy. No one knows exactly how Sinn Sisamouth died, but some people say that in his last moments against the regime, he asked to sing one final song, and he sang as beautifully as a songbird. Nevertheless, the firing squad shot him down anyway.
Maya Cheav is the author of the poetry chapbooks LYKAIA (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and TAN’S DONUTS (Chestnut Review, 2025). Her poems and flash fiction have been featured in Stone of Madness, ALOCASIA, Scapegoat Review, The Weaver, Across the Margin, and elsewhere. Her work has received a Best Small Fictions Nomination. She was a top 10 finalist for the 2023 Palette Poetry Chapbook Prize, guest judged by Danez Smith, as well as a 2024 Tin House Workshop alum, under the faculty mentorship of Roy G. Guzmán. She is a 2024-2025 Collections of Transience poet in residence.
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