After the News of Your Passing by Bunkong Tuon

After the News of Your Passing

1.
I went out of my way to tell people about you:
                                                Do you remember him?
He hired me straight out of graduate school.
        What did this refugee kid from Cambodia know
about teaching at a private liberal arts college?
        He must have seen in me a fawn trapped
in a well, eyes pleading, crying
        in the cold dank dark. He had my office
next to his. Every morning, we talked about classes,
        students, he reminding me of the good things
I already had: a wife and, years later, kids.
        He was my wisdom coffee, waking me up
with a clarity of mind to the magic
        and the good work before us.
He continued to teach in retirement.
        That was his calling. Kind teacher.
I told people, man,
        that man could disarm a bomb with his humor.
And he could converse on any topic
        meandering over valleys and rivers
then turning back to the original points
        with a new-found clarity.

Afterward you felt seen, lifted & loved.

2.
I was almost gleeful,
        eerily excited
to talk about you after your passing.
        Was it my way of honoring you?
My way of keeping you alive—
        Which has always been the domain of stories,
of poetry, and of songs?
        Was the mind in denial?
Whatever it was, it certainly beat
        driving alone to a grocery store at night,
pulling over on the side of the road,
        weeping in the dark

saying your name over and over.

*

Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian American writer, Pushcart Prize–winning poet, and professor who teaches at Union College in Schenectady, in NY. His work has appeared in World Literature Today, Copper Nickel, New York Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, diode poetry, Verse Daily, among others. He is the author of several poetry collections. In 2024, he published What Is Left, a Greatest Hits chapbook from Jacar Press, and Koan Khmer, his debut novel from Northwestern UP/Curbstone Books. He lives with his wife and children in Upstate New York.