Cambodia:

posted Jul 7, 2009

Sold for five dollars; given drugs to make them jump like monkeys in a cage—the foreigners are turned on by this; go crazy for it. Girls as young as five run up to the men on the streets and say; Mister, want some yum yum?  They have sleep in their eyes and don’t understand. Mister, want some yum yum? I will not think of my father, who married a Cambodian woman. Mister, want some yum yum? I will not think of him. Mister, want some yum yum? I jump like a monkey.

Erika Lutzner, a former chef, is pursuing an MFA in poetry from New England College while holding Upstairs At Erika's, a monthly writer's salon and running an online journal, Scapegoat Review.

She has published in Wicked Alice and Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, and has pieces coming out in Ping Pong, Naugatuck River Review, and web del sol. She lives in Brooklyn with her eighteen year-old cat, Kerouac, and is working on a memoir.

We’ve published two more poems by Lutzner: “The Little Things” and “Blackness Slips Through Sundays.”