Monica Sok’s In a Room of One Thousand Buddhas is a debut collection rooted in ritual and memory.
She draws on her Cambodian refugee heritage to explore generational trauma.
Poetry becomes an offering, echoing Theravada Buddhist traditions of her family.
Her verses revisit historic sites and war museums in Cambodia.
She confronts the US role in the Khmer Rouge genocide through language.
One poem reincarnates Henry Kissinger’s bombing orders into art.
The collection seeks healing, turning words into weapons that dismantle harm.
In a Room of One Thousand Buddhas
The water in my heart was falling. To my right
a row of Buddhas in meditation
sheltered by the Naga snake but this snake was real,
unlike the American and the heads in his cabinet.
The Naga protected the Buddha from rain,
spread its seven hoods to keep him dry.
And did I tell you it was raining all day?
I bought a poncho to ride around Siem Reap.
Rain during the dry season. Buddha calling on the earth
for witness. Something water protectors
at Standing Rock are doing right now. Protecting water
because water is life. But a night of rubber bullets
and tear gas and water hoses, that is not life.
Today, too, while I ate breakfast noodles in my hotel
neo-Nazis saluted back home in Harrisburg.
They were not calling on the earth, their palms up
but facing down. Looking at the Buddhas,
I thought, They look like me.
Some with broader shoulders, some from pre-Angkorian
and Angkorian times, some from this century,
four sitting back to back in a circle,
each in different mudras. Sandstone. Wood. Stone.
Depending on what was available
or how kings chose to perpetuate who they worshipped.
Sitting on the coils of the Naga. Eyes closed.
Or looking down. Some look scared. Calm.
Some with hands missing or cracked down the side.
Some look starved. Their clothes shattered.
One, wooden, was defaced standing.
Except for a small curve of lip and one shut left eye.
There are others, smaller, small as people.
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