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  Ten Poems by Kim Seung-hee

  The Truthful Human of Pickled Radish and Bacon  A kind person  I feel like they’re deceiving me I want to avoid kind people  A truthful person I feel like they’ll find me out  I’m always nervous in front of truthful people I cannot be kind, I cannot be truthful I’m afraid of people whose true intentions, or what’s inside them, I cannot tell  People who approach me with sincere minds, feel weighty to me, heavy as truth People who change their minds are dangerous, so are people who don’t change their minds Taxidermied . . . No, no, that’s all wrong I just want to become pickled radish or bacon already A sincere mind is so complicated and multi-dimensional But coping with a sincere mind entails the pain of your neck snapping the whole time If, with internal organs and uterus gutted, All that remains of pickled radish or bacon is a quiet sincere mind, Then a sincere mind is nothing but a lofty luxury In other words, a betrayal of the real mind, a flower pressed down like a pig’s head   Like Freud’s Museum, the real mind is dark and basic  Behind the sincere mind always lurks the real mind  A real mind is what moves the world, not a sincere mind I don’t even want to go there, I’m afraid of hidden real minds  A sincere mind that emerges when you snap the minds that miss the mark, Apparently that’s called candor  At least pickled radish is yellow to its core and bacon is striped pink and white, front and back What do I want  It has been a long time since yesterday disappeared What do I want  The sincere mind has faded and the white current of delirium fills the fridge What do I want I haven’t thought beyond the pickled radish and bacon  What more, what more, what more do I want The Truthful Human of Pickled Radish and Bacon (Changbi, 2021) The Lily and the Post-it  I find out that my friend has Stage IV stomach cancer  That it has spread to the lungs, liver, lymph nodes, that surgery is impossible In the sonogram, it looked like white lilies had bloomed in bunches I was in bed with my lingering illness But as soon as I heard the name of the hospital, I jumped into a taxi and rushed there Still, I’m grateful for the doctors, they’ll try an experimental targeted therapy, I’m crawling toward death but they’re so gently holding me up, I don’t want to start accommodating myself to the words “what if,” but I noticed the first-floor lobby wall was laden with yellow Post-its Yeah, they call it the Wall of Hope Late-stage patients post their letters to God  Why is hope a wall, not a door? It sounds like a paradox, but the last wall of hope is the door of hope Because I can read the yellow Post-it letters on the wall I’m so grateful, God has forsaken me but we haven’t forsaken God If we all don’t give up on God, maybe something could happen? Yes, right, I’ll have to get up, I’ll get up  They say I should find meaning in the pain of loss  She has nobody, just one son, committed to a psychiatric hospital for eleven years, And we are more afraid of living Than dying in loneliness I hope I don’t open my eyes tomorrow  Yes, I feel the same way The Truthful Human of Pickled Radish and Bacon (Changbi, 2021) Hall of Love  Loving is  An extraordinarily grand thing  Loving,  While living in a rented room of a grim basement hideout like the inside of a yam sack  Is grand Like a yam that sprouts purple blossoms and bluish veins even as its insides rot  When you just split open a bright green watermelon You see the insides of summer, brimming with colors of the trumpet flower  From the summer watermelon with its chest wide open The fantasy of a cliff and the cool smell of water fan out  And the chill of frost and the hues of a red paradise open  But what I see below is definitely a cliff  I know it is a cliff I came to a cliff I’ve reached a cliff  A cliff  Though it’s a cliff  I want to move a step further  The wish to move a step further from a cliff  The Hall of Love on a cliff  It’s not a structure, it’s not romance  What love needs is just A grand Hall of Love on a cliff Like a rotted yam, like a summer watermelon with its chest cut open The Truthful Human of Pickled Radish and Bacon (Changbi, 2021) On Childbirth  April 2018, at New York’s MoMA  I saw a photography exhibit called My Birth by Carmen Winant I had never seen this photographer’s work before  It was a masterpiece,  A collage of images collected and combined  By culling photos of childbirth from old magazines and books More than two thousand birthing photos filled two walls Pungent with the smell of blood from tearing flesh Uncensored reality unleashed in the scene of life and death  The resolute figure of a pregnant women with a full-moon belly about to burst The scenes of women crying into pillows and collapsing in their husband’s arms Bodies being pulled out from between legs amidst Push! Push! Scenes so wretched that Culture muffled them The red face of an infant: like an old person’s, like a monkey’s White, Black, Asian, Latino,  Faces all similar regardless of race, Have their eyes squeezed shut Smeared with viscous amniotic fluid and dusky red blood Faces of disgust, frowning and furrowed with wrinkles They have urgently whirled in the cramped, narrow birth canal  Are trembling not with claustrophobia, no, but agoraphobia They look like pessimists, Having to endure the looming, irremediable pains of old age, sickness, death They’re survivors, born after slashing through another’s flesh in the war of birth Behold, see how they wail with their fists shut tight In this gory scene of two thousand women giving birth  Ha hoo ha hoo . . . hoo ha ha, ha hoo It’s as if the jagged gasps of labor breathing exercises ring throughout the exhibition It’s violent, it’s urgent, my own breath is about to stop, the sky has turned yellow and spins, The uterine membrane rips, amniotic fluid flows, Push, push harder, harder, harder, push! Push harder, the baby’s head is stuck, harder, harder, harder, push! Push! Ha hoo ha hoo . . . hoo ha ha, ha hoo The child churns inside the belly Thirty-five years ago, I birthed you  Grabbing my daughter’s arm, I feel like I’m about to hurl From the labor pains of two thousand women, the sky swirling In the hall next to Carmen Winant’s exhibit,  Monet’s water lilies—filling an entire wall, Under limpid sunlight, Red and white water lilies, holding all the colors and light of the world, floating The gleam of momentary light, the silent abundance Feeling relief as if I’ve returned to the world of gods from that of beasts I laugh and take photos in front of the sunny water lilies with my daughter Then walk out of MoMA utterly depleted As if I’ve traversed the crossroads of life and death Ha hoo ha hoo . . . hoo ha ha, ha hoo . . .  It felt as if, along with the two thousand women, I birthed my daughter and Monet’s water lilies The Truthful Human of Pickled Radish and Bacon (Changbi, 2021) Spring, Escaping Capitalism It’s a spring day A horse gallops on the Gangbyeon Expressway Staying in its lane, the horse runs well enough Above the horse’s springing body, spring haze wavers It’s a horse from a racetrack, I hear A horse has escaped from a racetrack and is racing on spring  A racetrack!  An escape from capitalism  Laughter chases away stagnant air from the galloping horse’s lungs  Laughter springing forth from its belly drives the horse’s lungs Somehow today I’m troubled by nothing Laugh, laugh O runaway horse from the racetrack  I’m sorry, boss, the weather is just too good today It’s a spring day A big car with the racetrack owner inside Trails after the running horse  A patrol car follows, to make sure the horse isn’t hit by a car  No special violence or resistance from any one of them  Yes, you can do what you want  It’s a hazy-wavy, generous spring day New Work by the Poet Ultrasound Heartbeat A dark spot in that faraway universe Where dusky waters flow The uterus, and its egg— A fingernail-sized object, nestled like a black eye in the whirling current As it grows  It will emerge in the cloudy image  A lone figure in the shape of a swimming fish, fluttering Or listening to its own heartbeat, head bowed You and I, we will be connected by the umbilical cord You—can I call you “you”? A not-me but not-other  A not-other but not-me Such an unsettled, alien second person  How did you know to find me like this I’m sorry  They say you can’t choose your mother’s womb or your motherland But my heart is miserable and lowly and always dark like this  (Waves will swell five to seven meters high in seas everywhere) I am always uneasy that I am me I am always afraid that I am me How can I bear it? That happiness, not the kind that strangely overreacts But that quiet and full love, like a tree planted streamside Sound of heartbeats Sound of hoofbeats running toward me from the beginning of time Sound of drumbeats reaching forcefully from over a faraway hill  Or, the sound of a train, pressing toward me from a pitch-dark universe Sound of plane wheels rattling as they touch ground Not a sound of departure It’s a sound of arrival  A sound from inside my body From the uterus to the heart  Coming closer, closer to me, closing in on me  A sound beating into my heart  The sound of your heart  That beats right this moment  hurtles towards my heart  That beats right this moment Two but one, one but two Not-me but not-other Not-other but not-me Other but me Me but other  An unsettling entity, second person You The faint yet forceful, alien second person’s Ultrasound heartbeat Hyundae Munhak (January 2022) Peony’s Time  What time  Which time The time when the peony blooms What time Which time The time when the whole world holds its breath You don’t exist and I don’t exist  But wafts a distant peony’s breath What time Which time The time when alone at night Spasms lap against my whole body  What time Which time Well, this kind of time Well, this kind of precipice Well, this kind of lightning strike The time when you might die  The time when you’re dying The time when everything in the world holds its breath And only the wiggling, solitary heart, The peony, is left  The time when an unknown breath sneaks by like a knife When an unknown breath sneaks in like a knife What time Which time The time when the peony blooms What time Which time The time when The damn peony drops with a thud The Truthful Human of Pickled Radish and Bacon (Changbi, 2021) Freedom from Sudden Rain There must be many types of freedom Among them I love most  The fresh freedom of when I cut through a shower that drenches me to my core A handful of raindrops A handful of air A handful of day What meaning does ruin have for someone who’s been ruined before Nevertheless Relentless rain is  Rain that makes pain anew A new cloud creates a new rain The endlessly repeating raindrops in Kusama’s paintings A smile, thirst, a sob well up  To make new drops to make new clouds No pumpkins are the same  Every day, day to day, New rain drops newly  Each new drop pierces a new pain No freedoms are the same  A new pain has a new weight  Once ruined To be unreined from sudden rain is to Simply walk into myriad rains  New Work by the Poet Watching from the Airport  When you go to the airport and watch Life is so simple: Departure Arrival People choose one of the doors  And shuffle out  Or walk in There’s an allure in departure And a tingle in arrival  The cheer of air, shouted without a sound People cutting through gravity to take off  People holding onto gravity to land  They go through all kinds of things Live this way and that, then Departure Arrival Shuffle out one door   What’s frightening about death is that heaven doesn’t issue visas You need to be issued an arrival visa once you reach there Since I’m not dead yet I cannot know  But I hear if you go and can’t get an arrival visa  You have to circle the transfer pathway for eternity  You have to suffer a death penalty for a long time in an infinite labyrinth The Truthful Human of Pickled Radish and Bacon (Changbi, 2021) Silent Night, Holy Night  Piercing wind, the frigid winter night Buried in darkness, a house, where an old woman lived alone Knock knock, came from the kitchen door leading to the backyard The old woman, dragging her legs With icicles popping in the joints, opened the door A white dog, with a newborn puppy in its mouth Gave news of its birth  To the old woman Without realizing, the old woman kneeled and poured forward With her two hands to cradle the puppy Holding the puppy in her arms The old woman walked to the front yard Inside the doghouse, with the vinyl drapes pushed open, Four other puppies lay, steam rising from their bodies  You did so well, you gave birth on your own The old woman murmured,  Stroking the mother dog’s head over and over She cooked delicious seaweed soup  And blowing on the bowl, placed it in front of the mother dog with both hands The cluster of suckling puppies hung onto the mother’s nipples The Truthful Human of Pickled Radish and Bacon (Changbi, 2021) * All poems by Kim Seung-hee in this section have been translated by Emily Jungmin Yoon.

  by Kim Seung-hee

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  Poems by Eugene Mok

  Autographed Cause of Death  I have a good kitchen and a bad kitchen. If I must choose, I will go with the good kitchen. Cooking in the good kitchen, Slicing a lemon into perfect halves with an expensive knife. A soup brought to boil on the induction cooktop,  Lemon will be added before electricity is cut off. Whenever I cook Everything in the kitchen follows me around. Pots of varying depths, Big and small frying pans, Patterns on dishes are especially beautiful.  I cook and  Do not wash my dishes. Because in this world such things take care of themselves.  In the bad kitchen, You have been standing for too long. At the smelly sink, You are thinking of what you ate yesterday. Perhaps inside your stomach resides Something similar. When you breathe, the air is filled with the smell of rot.  You are waiting for a woman. At night, you sat alone in your kitchen chair and ejaculated. Crumpled tissues are everywhere.  Trash overflows by your front door. It is difficult to stop living like this because you have  Lived your life as it is and fulfilled it as yourself. The number of many women who died in your room, Have you ever counted them? You have been standing for far too long. Not a single shard of light pierces your kitchen.  I own a good kitchen, but The kitchen is with me here only when I write poetry. Soup boiled with poetry, lemon sliced with poetry, Knife held with poetry.  From a good kitchen to a bad kitchen, I will be moving now. Why don’t you smell the lemon and turn your head away. I am standing in the darkness. By my hands you are dying, Can you see? Autographed Cause of Death  1. Today I steeled my heart and went to see the grave. It occurred to me I will never make this visit if not today. The reason why I made the grave was to be assured of the fact that I was dead. This assurance was the least I needed to feel that, yes, I am dead, stop trying so hard.  However, now that I am dead, I have become so busy with all sorts of things, and it has been impossible to care about the grave. I could take a different path there but there was no reason to be different, and I was lost on the path that I had been on before.  People like us recognize a grave that no one has visited for a long time. The river deer comes to visit the grave because they know. I decide to wait for the night to come and follow the river deer. 2. Night won’t come.  3. I pretended to stick my hands into my pockets and wandered the middle of the mountain. 4. Is this cake? I cooked a handful of dirt. I said I only eat what I want to eat and the river deer said the same thing. Why are you so late? There was traffic. I see.  I pretended to take my hands out of my pockets and approached the river deer. Do you like cake?  The river deer said it tasted like dirt and liked it. 5. What happened to the car? It just passed by. 6. I said to the river deer that I was looking for the grave. I told the deer that it was my grave and the deer offered to search for it together. The deer said that if it was okay with me than it wanted to stay by my side. I would like that. I would like that, too. The river deer and I ran into the overgrown mountain path. 7. I think it is much sadder when a car stays for a while before passing by, rather than when a car passes by very quickly. I said those words to the river deer. If you saw such a thing, it must have been sad. The river deer said those words to me. What will we do if we don’t find the grave? Let’s say this never happened and since the grave is what brought us together let’s find another grave and make it ours.  I think the river deer likes that I am around. I like that the river deer is around. We forgot about finding the grave and counted the number of falling stars.  Translated by Jack Jung Illustration ©OMSCIC COMICS

  by Eugene Mok

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  Poems by Heo Yeon

  When Will You Become a Song  Dream not of a child who is your perfect copy. Be not  surprised by news. Be not holy whatever the reason may be. Die  not in someone else’s sentence.  Let’s practice how not to get boiling hot. Be as easy and relaxed  As an offer to grab a cup of coffee. Do not set yourself ablaze.  When schedules align then use your sick day and Sit beneath the great tree of a country church. Light a candle, too, And eat salted pollack roe pasta and go our separate ways. Afterwards Do not get curious about one another. Charging forward is a boring game. Think smart. You must not  Get addicted.  If you get addicted, Who will live longer? Such worries you must have. It’s obvious, mortgaged houses will last longer than us.  Once a while, I will pray. I will pray that your sad origin will not overtake your life, that you will be less unfortunate  than I am, that I will not be in your records. So, do not let your heart drop ever again. There are so many types of break ups. Another will happen again. Signpost pointing to too many roads and Birds flying toward too many directions and Boats sailing out to too many oceans and Too many stones— I love you. However, One must always get off a car on fire. When will you become a song Sad Habit  Sometimes in longing my hand is placed on my heart already gone.  I must now live with a different heart. When I said I will not be longing  Anymore without being overwhelmed, The air, too, shared us.  The arrow shot by time stopped and at last Memories walked into stony coffins one by one and  Lids closed and serial numbers were given and  On the altar and we were broken up. The shadows we left behind in that alley, The songs we sang off-beat, The slashes we made on the wall, The prayers we gave to all, and The crematorium smoke and the blinking streetlights—goodbye to all that. When purple flowers raise their heads through the cracks of sidewalk blocks, I thought about things that flew away before they could ever accumulate.  At the harbor of anchored boats with erased names, These are the events that I predicted when the pit of my stomach oddly ached. Why did you walk on water. Wherever you as a person may be, from that landscape I want to escape. You are hell. Translated by Jack Jung Illustration ©OMSCIC COMICS

  by Heo Yeon

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  I Live Alone in Jeju and Can’t Hold My Drink

  When it’s June in Jeju and the hydrangeas in Jongdal-ri fill out I’ll pluck a hydrangea at nightfall squeeze out its juice in a juicer and drink it I want to take on the hydrangea’s juicy tone so I watch the flowers every day   Come, step right up to me.   I got to know myself inside and out while living on my own I found I have an artistic temperament I paint the big picture every day Maybe that is why I’m single   My identity knows no end.   When I see the travelers who flock to Jeju the water bowl behind me spills over It’s all because my shell is thin and weak I hope they don’t get hurt I want to tell them: Don’t fall in love again ©Yeji Yun The wind blowing in Jeju has pulled out all my feathers Progress knows no end. Every day, I imagine running off to Gimpo I imagine stealing Gimpo But I won’t run away I won’t steal I’m a strange funny person living in Jeju I make others laugh and laugh a lot by myself too There’s a lot to laugh about in Jeju It’s a hard place to live for a fugitive, though Your laughter will get you noticed right away Translated by Agnel Joseph 

  by Lee Wonha

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  I Walked Tall

  No Place to Be   Do you think you’re a celeb? Or a model of some sort? What’s with all this gay love nonsense? The rumor reached Mother’s ears too —the Dark Lord of our home Every time she sees me, Mother’s face twists into a frown, like a bug is crawling up her neck Father treats me like a clown I heard these days it’s cool to stick out You certainly seem to be doing your best My brother threatens me outright Gawd, I’m so embarrassed I could die Just know you’re dead meat if my friends find out! I dropped out of school, afraid to face my schoolmates Should I run away to avoid my scary family? Where do I go when I leave home? There’s no place I can rest easy     I’m a Seventeen-Year-Old Delivery Boy   I was told I’d get 70,000 won a day Score! I thought and jumped at the offer   I thought this gig would be a breeze but Mr. Kim busted up his shoulder and called it quits Mr. Park broke his leg and called it quits Mr. Cha had a concussion and was rushed to the ER   I feel like quitting every day But I can’t —I need the money   If the elevator is broken, I take the stairs If there’s no one home, I leave the package at the front desk I go up, I go down towing heavy loads   I can’t protest when I’m made to compensate for a missing package I can’t rest when my legs feel weak I’m a seventeen-year-old delivery boy     A Single Daddy’s Mom   I thought I was done raising kids But how could I have known my troubles would truly begin in my old age? Mom’s griping started up again in the morning   I’m eighteen The girl I loved took off leaving me only our baby The baby became Mom’s charge I dropped out of school for the child Formula, diapers, clothes, shoes . . . There were so many things to buy   It’s your seed, your responsibility Dad, a day laborer, said providing for his wife and children was hard enough You should’ve been careful Neither you or I got to finish school What sort of life is that?   Even as she feeds the baby formula Even as she changes the diapers, Mom keeps up her complaining A single daddy’s mom whose gray hairs have multiplied   Give it a break, for crying out loud! I feel sorry and get mad at her for no reason     Please Give Me More   Butts shift restlessly in seats even before the bell rings at the end of the fourth period The teacher’s voice grazes past ears soullessly Only the loud ticktock of bellies can be heard   Youngwon, Soojung, Sanyoo, and Jaekyung already have one foot out from under their desks and set in the middle of the aisle so that they can sprint out as soon as the class ends   Jaekyung has the longest legs of all If my short legs are going to beat those long ones of his and be number one I need to be the first out the door   I was the first to leave but Jaekyung is right in front of me skipping stairs, three or four at a time   The cooks fill Jaekyung’s tray to the brim with scoops of rice and loads of side dishes They give me only half of what they gave Jaekyung I ask for more so they give me a little extra Give me some more, I tell them They say, You eat a lot for a slip of a girl I can beat him in arm wrestling, I reply I’m better than him at soccer too Loaded tray in hand I walk tall   ©Park Sanghyuk     Walk like a Lady   Friends say my walk isn’t pretty to look at Some even say I walk like a man Every time they say that I retort confidently, Why? What’s wrong with my walk?   Mom scolds me sometimes for the way I walk When we go somewhere together she demands I walk like a girl When she does that I swing my arms vigorously and march even more briskly I straighten my knees and walk with great gusto As if this is my own way of living in this world Like a lady Like me As if asking if this isn’t a pretty good way to live     Translated by Agnel Joseph   I Walked Tall Changbi Education, 2019  

  by Kim Ae Ran

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  Selected Poems by Ha Jaeyoun (2)

  Hello, Draculas   If you let me inside you I will stay by your side forever And with the face of a child or an old man I will give you all of my love. From beginning to end, Even though all the rooms of the world are filled with sunshine, The fact that you’re alive, how beautiful to know That I’m the only one who knows it. It’s okay if you don’t abandon the boy in you and It’s okay if I don’t desert the girl in me. Even though all the rooms in the world are full of wide open doors, The fact you’re in agony, how beautiful to know That I am the only one who knows it.   If you give me your permission To become a white bride or virgin lunatic, I will be the evidence That you are you. In the gushing darkness, Rather than birthing a baby, We will give birth to ourselves. The we that we will make Will really live. But only if you say hey In a voice that’s never been used in the world, Only if my ears don’t go deaf In the sunlight that brightens this world.   Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang  

  by Ha Jaeyoun

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  That Dog

  Because that dog could be alive, just maybeI stop every time I encounter a dog on the streetI think it looked like that I think it was about this big I think it was brown I think itwas spotted I stand thereand think about that dog I just can’t remember.     I was nine then, so that dog is probably dead I kept cryingThat dog who kept trying to crawl on my lap whose body left behind a trace of warmthwho was desperatewho did not want to be left alone who had no name and wanted a namewho knew nothing who knew nothing and wagged its tailwas strange and scary to me The soft and weak shouldn’t be with the soft and weaksomeone told me laterbut I didn’t want to know anything smart like that Because that dog could be alive, just maybeI dampened with sweat every time I came across a dog on the streetWhat that dog looked like, I just couldn’t rememberbut I could still feel the texture of that tongue licking my fingers like crazy The tongues of the random dogs I came across were blooming redand licking the black noses on the street shiny and clean Twenty years later I got another dogI no longer shuddered thinking that dog was alive, just maybe, but I kept cryingbecause I thought this dog might die, just maybethis dog might leave a trace of its body’s warmth on my lap and leave me might desperately, utterly leave memight return to a nameless world because its name was too heavymight recognize me might recognize me and so not wag its tail I heard dogs share the memories of other dogs and believed it My dad sat the dog down and confessed his sins all night to the dogNext time, be born as a human, we’ll meet again as humans, live a long, long time His back, the moment before collapselooked earnest like the back of a giant dog But this dog seemed to have no great interest in any of thisIts tail slapped the wood floor, slap, slapand then it opened its mouth wide in a yawn Translated by Hedgie Choi

  by Yu Gyeyoung

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  Selected Poems by Kim Jeong-hwan

  The Late Years’ Future   What I would like to steal is not the future’s Time but the late years’ future. In library thicker than my span and heavier than my Weight and fresher than my youth that Webster’s New International Dictionary Second Edition Unabridged Was to be stolen then in my high school years not that but At bouquiniste after half century for big money fifteen thousand Won Bought that book, once-deep-yellow cover’s Little-finger-thickness board so worn Beyond chimney-blackish yellow to be tattered clothes Cloth is now. Pages folded for fifty years are for fifty years ahead Not to be unfolded. To unfold the year 1960 from now on In that way unfold the cover we cannot but. Always the future’s quotation Is forbidden. Word as if cannot be helped Incarnates its own past several millenniums. USA also once were quite progressive Against British Empire the English-become-American Dictionary to make I mean. Under that influence aviation’s Human civilization inside not the universe but nature’s Dream is flying. Inside the animals’ and plants’ Flying as colors is as black-white Photograph flying. Architecture’s vessel also is so flying. Learning is the learning in that what has returned is the very future, proper noun is Measurement’s grammar. Mentality is printing and vernacular is stamp and Story is the holiest scripture sure. That the pronunciation is the word-origin, that cannot be holier. Younger than me first vinyl album that by stylus Wearing and wearing without music in style younger than me It is not accumulating the being accumulated but no matter what Accumulating the accumulating its vocabularies are than OED More chock-a-block is in one volume without even a synonym and words Compete the meaning’s piled-up depth and that is the only Competition, that Webster’s New International Dictionary That late year’s future steal I would like to. Without epilogue, now and again for the brass band march’s Naked-body-sunny-effervescence-like New coinages to ripen into it Lending my helping hand too.       Heard Story   Heard story is an audible story’s weary Turbulence. Holiness so comes. A halt it is. Human So stands. Holiness is not grace and mercy Sure. Something like a fear’s expedient, like a story. Heard story is heard story’s night and the first Words and War horses and night again. For pregnancy not to be Disaster Scheherazade, greeting the night visitors is. Joseph in the end Shall name such thing extravagance but I regard it much suitable And also lucky extravagance. Something like an embroidery sampler it is. That the constellations-tearing outside is due to the unrighteous, Is lucky. Because audible story is so Heard story in the end good news is. The descent sure it is. Wind is in sleep. Usual exile being always too close to body so Itself frightened, then story even is of no Use. Cow, cow . . .  By the sound-excelling-meaning Sight can little by little erase something only. The (female)sex-overcome prosperity is Heaven. Even incest’s Noah and even pregnancy itself ’s Jonah and whale and Macho Abraham and Moses also from the first story was Story-erasing story. A disreputable Deluge is great circumcision of gender and holiness. So Queen of Sheba, however sexy white-in-red honey-thigh What for should she connect, Saul and David Goliath homosexuality With Solomon’s cheap-boisterous adultery? That the disaster’s blessing and the blessing’s disaster was the very chaos, the Story in isolation begins. We for the first time Continue in the separate story only. Without subject and object, Without liberation without independence even as it is separate story is continued. Never-existent grace in Sodom and Gomorrah’s mud ground In great abundance wallows and the priest Zachariah the not-yet-conceived Son John the Baptist’s decapitation news hears. In his wife terrible old body’s pregnancy six months This time too young body’s Maria inside her the baby’s Crucifixion news hears. Must be indifferent, of course. So Zachariah To the today-soothsaying prophet rank rises. He is Moses’ elder brother, Aaron of eloquence, rather Idol singer rather the pronunciation ‘cow’ and rather That in Hebrew letter-picture’s austerity still clothed, Jesus. The Old Testament’s righteous party Enoch is a Koran’s storyless Prophet . . . because so abundantly heard stories are the latest Good news Jesus, Of that all year round bursting, awakening agonal lifetime’s Crucifixion pity, Genesis, Of that the birth-of-language-as-drama’s flippancy’s Crucifixion pity, Exodus, Of that the food’s rule and mentality architecture law’s confusion-incarnation’s Crucifixion pity, Levi, Of that the knowing animal’s more thirsty population havoc’s Crucifixion pity, Numbers, Of That the absurd duration and bottom-endless boring intensification’s Crucifixion pity, Deuteronomy Of writing of writing of writing . . . So heard stories are good news. Two nuance’s Lingering imagery there is. One is Falstaff-resembled Arthur Fiedler Boston Pops. The new invented hi–fi stereo audio equipment, on his hip’s 1/3 extent steel chair seated, for himself music- Selecting hears he. With speakers as both side ears That the letter ‘LIVING STEREO’ is riding the flow, CD Label is recording equipment and music. The other is At antipode with Glenn Gould, Morton Gould. Impliedly surprise-attack-making March Symphony band. Both were in the classical music world Not all the way to overruling, just without offence-meaning to Grand style living genius popular music artists and So heard story is good news, in LIVING STEREO 60 CD Box bottled. Sampler too. Of course. For fifty years an insignificant matter with fifty years’ authority Heard new, therefore Talmud, From Israel to Assyria to Babylon to Jerusalem To Babylon again and to irrevocable world Not over-2500-years’ duration’s Diaspora But over-2500 years’ duration is Diaspora. Between portrait willing to scatter as color and bust willing To close ranks as death so Heard story is good news.       Aunt     Mother is deceased and Aunt is dead long too yet Aunt is not growing old. With Mother’s lifelong face’s Overlapping synthesis under three or four years overlapping Not, aunt is crying. Not sexy, sure. With Mother’s synthesis’ experience young and pretty and therefore as if she must cry she is crying. As if happy Aunt there Cannot be, as if Aunt must young nephew’s lifetime long Be unhappy she is crying. As if because of the not-to-be- Minutely-seen crying Aunt is young and pretty and real Sexy she is crying. Invisible muscular man Dividng discontinuous stage’s acts and scenes and Good-erasing, evil- continuing curtain raiser portents’ Enter and realization. From purpose and suffering to purpose’s suffering, And to without-purpose’s suffering long ago, long ago, Long ago, education crush-chewing the old times. Mother is even in the margin without Father Cannot do the margin. Child is to Mother the brave Death sure. Velocity not knowing it is velocity walks into. Sonny, are you in sleep? Sonny, are you risen? Rather with wailing Greet please son’s breakdown, Mama. Why must Pieta take off its savagery? Mother is deceased and Aunt is dead long too yet Over three or four years Aunt is the margin. Once-shiny Body’s shining remoteness. So You awakening calling me are me. That you calling me are me, is a song. Only inside the ear hearable, growing away, being the side’s Definition, your silence, admiration-begetting Exclamation mark without exclamation, one who cuts Time’s eternity is hero and drama without a hero We call holiness. That when the light is unbending occupation, even before we can Bear the whole words dawn breaks and when what is new can be So worn fortunately running River there is. Sense’s bride, with familiar smell Hears without sense’s rank, without thunderbolt Strange-Words-hearing on the first earth freedom folks, Supernatural because of the body. Resignation-unbending Constanze, on earth what Error she can have made you say? With happiest moment’s misfortune Twisted pallid, The more beautiful woman there is. Her name also is like misfortune Goddess a pallid name. This morning whose laughter is thousand-years-old this goddess’s Priest clown’s melody-ignorant lyrics are, Death be there taking sorrow’s greenhouse off I will go there. With death interviewing, without a Star that is incompatible with death, with part one and part two that Ritual the universe is.       `By Chance` and `Casually`     `Casually` also is not storage nor inside it a glazed Round-belly pot moreover. The smaller the more cannot. `Casually` is so big and heavy to be lax downward. `By chance` is so big and light to be lax upward. At an ancient earthen rampart site wood-burning stove by chance, And casually, this cannot be…And more casually, why? What Primitive man`s steamer ground stove even. That is excessive Material`s material materialization isn`t it…. A mill stone is maybe for sorry from the very first in photograph. A-Millennium-before excretion is outside the gravity. Casually longing one hundred years by chance one hundred years Thickness therefore by chance when you and I, were we, ceaseless Suffering-to-hardship-transforming kitchen and crock-platform barn and Stable household secrets have faded. That the yard in its breast harbored earth and roof and chimney forehead Balanced the sky, miracles have faded. Springs and wells the poor- Life-shining eye have lost. That firewood sellers, salted seafood sellers, Ironmongers, cattle traders, hawkers, even singing beggars As if returned again after running away out of the world the traffic Was vigorous, making-a-livings have lost none other than liveliness. Daily necessities lack none other than making-a-living`s memory. Commodities` display and enumeration called the yet-living. However these faded things might have gone, beyond human Field they have not gone and, are between human `by chance` and `Casually` maybe. There holy is. `Fading things fade` Occurrence do not cease now and for ever therefore there Holier and holier is. Not the fading thing nor the fading occurrence Itself. That long after having faded by announcing its own true value With its fading-out, the history`s thickness with loss` Scar beautify, the heritage`s Fact and way is holy. Until history shall not be history now and for ever Such is history`s destiny and holiness` progress. Because The once-such virile and plain modernity`s time is into today`s Hell tour`s incoherent guide degenerated, is just Long and long standing, isn`t it? Barely surviving Little left faith vehemently take hell`s side and The incoherence from the very first as direction confirms, is just violent And violent isn`t it? That story without time out of time Continue, can it be possible? Modernity`s time that have long become time`s mirror So asks. Of pre-music instruments only consisting Human city is that can be, it seems to ask us. Time and sense and as its system the meaning, as system`s System the world or position itself, if after all-those-implosioning Music, the human city consisting of instruments Also is possible, we must answer it seems. More daring, such human city is possible, we must answer, Without time out of time I mean. So slowly and so meticulously already we In the future come to participate. Because However holy it may be the fading thing`s fading Way cannot constitute the future and modernity`s Time also fades into history`s fate. Speeding the speed up the future the incoherence`s Direction takes off sure. Beyond incoherence`s story `By chance` and `casually` As the death-resembling incoherence`s Broadcast. Once in a while Assumed evil`s flash is most ethical.     Those Days the USA Cockroach     That You should wash off your view`s picture to see the world right, Those thought`s days there are. However many times we may our view`s Picture cannot be all washed off but, for so doing Being washed off by chance picture`s outline is seen and again tarnishing Picture is recovered yet ever different from former picture and Such occurrence several times re-echoes and what ever cumulates Sure. From-picture-to-language-birth details are so and even now These are language of picture. Expression is also impressionism so to speak. Animal-plants and nature scenery, fickle-sexy`s loquacity, stone`s `No-excuse-to-offer` look metastasis, with from-views`-picture-to-myth`s- Birth details alternating in the lead it is even now So. Language birth is arts` birth. Picture`s inside out, photograph is so too. That the first authority Is the fact that the future is open thing, with black and white. Film is so too but We sometimes do not see film, so do not wipe off but Live in film. As the with-a-natural-colors-smeared hero Good or bad without autobiography. But, so at least Theater is TV`s, and Internet`s black and white body Future. Or language is full color`s losing ticket. No problem, Such life I do not see why not. I only About language birth have said. That life`s meaning there is, Very noisy death`s birth about. The Great Depression and New Deal Policy`s those days barn-like interior tin rice bowls Among In-clusters back-to-back mouths to feed poverty is big build. Rotten sweat and remaining rainy season`s smell also and forehead`s several–milleniums`- Wave-furrowed wrinkles also and suckling whining baby Lips cry also is big build. Those days the USA cockroach was much Larger sure. Even in interior I mean. Poverty`s intermittent Emergences each adds wretchedness so we ask. That something called the very far Poverty there was, is it right? Not devil Shape sure. Devil is not in intermittent even, and wretchedness Not adds even and only its-figure-hiding-full-blown-case Shows so we must minutely see into it to see its true self. That contradiction is hope. Stalin also is not a case of advancing more than The slaughter`s benevolent Enlightened monarch, no, haven`t I already said? And unlike also the way dictionary of history`s item`s chronological re-enumeration Is not history and re-enumeration of history in index is not dictionary of History, no. For those days the USA cockroach Much larger was. Now that the red is the only moisture-laden, That the fashion design only is red, in interior design`s interior I mean. In virtue of poverty we not only came to make this much living. Still in virtue of poverty we but also make this much living. Former Soviet Union`s Staple food dark bread`s slather caviar`s Taste the small-luxuriant bottle`s little by little licking Upscale gift caviar cannot taste. The USA`s Russian Orchestral Fireworks Pops Caviar also is pop not caviar. Having broken out of soviet without suffering it Performance is nothing but `Life is performance` message and Remains are nothing but architecture`s cute and happy custom. Adapted to the neat-with-threadbareness building photograph the neat- with-threadbareness Book remains it is. That is sufficient to be the clock`s-eyes-too-big Miracle sure. As for the too-belated late years grotesque jewel-box The such-too-belated late years grotesque jewel-box there is not. To take war and terrible disaster intact on modestly Waiting attitude have its head screwed on right. Soiled reddish brown Varnish work wood furniture face`s expression-deep façade, just prior to First making-a-living-word-glittering coal-blackness. Trained in disdaining Not yet, poor things. Such as Glasgow, Glasgow Nuance also as if just prior to brimful tear`s angulating sorrow`s armor. Of the jaggedness-eliminated height. Of bricks that ties up the Closing that closes drudgingly time`s widening two legs. Even though it is The future`s paler solider ghost`s repeat. Translated by Kim Jeong-hwan

  by Kim Jeong-hwan

• 

  Selected Poems by Ha Jaeyoun (1)

  Machinery   We are not being stopped merely in order to make boundless and minute noises.   Just as I am not a musical instrument that can be played by someone who is not myself, just as I look at myself resulting from myself   Somewhere, as love is shared, unqualified persons are conceived.   Leaving our former world, we merely turn our new planet into a wasteland.   As the breath that I inhale through my gills is conveyed to your lungs, like black spots we grow colder toward each other,   grow darker, piercing one another’s surface.   Translated by Chung Eun-gwi, Brother Anthony of Taizé       A Person    After I used to be like that frosty pink On the night cloud hanging over that long, stretched out island,   Just as time passes slowly, I became a person.   Sometimes I was like the murky shadow That startled a friend awake Who fell asleep for a moment at the end of a flowerbed In the afternoon.   But now I became a person.   Soft coral, the blue of cotton candy, in the ocean raindrops are falling From the half-face of the night moon climbing above.   The lullaby in the dream of my child Who sleeps in the future, the final verse Of a song no one has ever heard.   After the tide rolls in, while it rolls out again, the waves Pull white sand, the setting sun, and starlight, Returning them back to their place.   Vanished seasons overlap Darkening the sky outside the earth,   And I became a person Repearling the seashells to the string of this necklace That connects the colors, pieces, and names Of all the beaches in all the countries Floating on earth.   Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang         Spirit and Opportunity   Without any reason whatsoever, Did you start a program Called the infinite vacation that never ends?   When the command that enters you Pushes you forward In a way that can only be described as fatal,   In order to record the soul of the sandstorm Blowing in from the farthest lands, Your whole body must be covered with dust.   The proof is in your pupils. All worlds begin from dust.   Spirit tumbling down the canyon of broken time.   In a scene impossible to unfold, Like the wings of a satellite that are eternally spread,   Sourced from infinity, sorrow is transmitted   Like a single speck marked between infinity and infinity, To us.   Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang         The Things I Know    I know An envelope has Only a single person as its recipient. The moment I stop breathing On this side of this thin layer of air, Is the moment I realize you start to run On that side where the air is more thin. When light flickers for a microsecond, I know Millions of messages are coming and going mid-air. Without a single one crashing into another, they are Delivered at high speed. A feather of a little bird Exposing its white belly, balancing in the sky Falls and I know That nobody remembers the moment Of a feather falling. To find the face you have now, You threw out tens of thousands of expressions and I know it isn’t here, but over there Where the snowflakes falling today Make it cold.   Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang       An Acquired Life    The languages of other countries Are all we need. Love is that which disappears. Your lips are your flag. All that which pours out and pools, The magic that fills your body with new blood Rests at the tips of an exiled child.   No song begins with an anacrusis Just to end. Wearing a borrowed immigrant’s coat, Clearing an incomplete throat, Yes, yes, I, am, here, Torn up Continuously   As one string from a scrap of cloth Is swept away into the wind Into a thing that cannot be, split Apart into unwritable text.   Translated by Jake Levine, Hyemi Seok, Soohyun Yang  

  by Ha Jaeyoun

• 

  The Dog Doesn’t Know / The Unknowing Dog Knows

  The dog doesn’t know: how to get the treat out of the toy. But the dog knows: that he’ll be eating that treat soon.     The dog knows: that when you went out today, it wasn’t for dog-related reasons. (It knows, but still, what a fuss!) But the dog doesn’t know: that if you don’t go out, no dog treats.    The dog doesn’t know: that the outside is full of things the dog doesn’t know. But the dog knows: that’s why the outside is interesting.   The dog doesn’t know: why you’re sad today. But the dog knows: that you are sad.     The dog doesn’t know: many things that you do know. But the dog knows: there are many things you do not know.   The dog knows: how much you love the dog. But the dog doesn’t know: how much you loved the dog. Translated by Hedgie Choi

  by Song Seungeon

• 

  Selected Poems by Kim Hyesoon

  Lean on the Water   Lean your body on the water and cling to it Can’t bear it any longer. I twist my bodyholding on to the fingers of water and   wear a coat woven with water’s hairI crouch and cover my face Let’s be slant togetherLet’s fall embracing each other After I jump offit’ll be your turn to jump When I throw down the fishing lineplease bite on the hook and bob upI’ll do the same next time Plead to the water that talks to itself more than you do It babbles on when it’s drunkso I take the rain home Water pours in through the window You’re about to leanon itbut the waterleans on you even more   Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), p. 14           The Salt Dress Inside Me   When sorrow is endured, salt gets excreted from your body Your salty-salty expression Your animal gaze like a lonely island hammered by the sea   Some days when there is a high-sea warning seawater gushes in over the short eyelash fences but the salt’s architecture doesn’t crumble salt-flowers bloom from my fingertips like stinging sobs   Salt, turns my fallen shadow into powder and scatters it under the streetlamps Salt, persists in me like the sea’s architecture   Salt, we embrace tightly and try to capture the sea in each other   The salt pond is at work as soon as I’m awake I listen to the rising sea architecture   I am wearing the salt dress inside me   Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (Action Books, 2014), p. 20             Saturn’s Sleeping Pill   A place where my shadows visit when I close my eyes There, I put on a belt made of smoke When my soul buzzes like the mosquitoes at night my shadows swarm like a pride of lions on the plains A place where my ashes get up and dance after I’ve been burnt today   Saturn has 60 moons therefore, I have 60 shadows I have 120 eyes, of course I don’t get to open all of my eyes whether the sun rises or not   Therefore, how many bodies do I have? How many more bodies can die? The ground is soft-soft and my footsteps are limp-limp The air is sticky-sticky and my heart heaves-heaves A place where your ghost snatches my soul away like a spider web   I pray for my own soul I sit on my dead bodies and put to sleep a few remaining live bodies Longings are asleep doubts are asleep even the throats that have not yet opened are asleep all asleep   What do you want to be when you die? I’m going to be something that has no borders   A place where the moons rise continuously continuously A place where teeth poke-poke out even if you press them down with a thick blanket A place where the dark sooty lions perch on the faint horizon their eyelids keep keep falling on the glowing rays from their eyes When you part with the shadows there you also part with the weight of my body here   Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (Action Books, 2014), p. 27                 Influenza   When I pronounce “bird” only the wind remains in me as if water, fire, earth all vanish Maybe the name “bird”is the illness of the name “bird” The bird makes the sound of blowing wind from my dripstone-like bones   We received an order to kill all the birds that couldn’t fly Since there was no time to kill, we received an order to put them in a sack and bury them alive in a pit   A few days after I got married I placed a chick on a cutting board and was about to strike the plucked bird with a knife It felt as if l were holding the legs of a just-born infant the chick covered in goose bumps was trembling I wanted to wrap the bird in a baby’s quilt and hold it in my arms   That thing that snoozes with its head pillowed on its chest Have we really reached the end? The nightmare’s curtain rips and Death is born inside   Like a wall of wind my heart trembles to the rhythm   In my village now there are no such things with wings on them They have all been put in the ground, powdered with disinfectant My aunt was caught by Mr. Gas Mask when she tried to wrap her goose in a baby blanket onto her back   The fact that I’m writing a bird poem means that I’m ill with the bird A bird perched on my collarbone pecks me They say when you die you go with the wind but now I go with the wind of the bird   As if all the kite strings of my country have tangled and piled up high in the sky the white-feathered mountain flutters in the wind and inside it 3-month old, 6-month old tiny eyes heaped in layers a few hours before they are shoved into the pit they tremble with their eyes opened   Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (Action Books, 2014), p. 35–36         Red Scissors Woman   That woman who walks out of the gynecology clinic Next to her is an old woman holding a newborn   That woman’s legs are like scissors She walks swiftswift cutting the snow path   But the swollen scissor blades are like fat dark clouds What did she cut screaming with her raised blades Blood scented dusk flooding out from between her legs   The sky keeps tearing the morning after the snowstorm A blinding flash of light follows the waddlewaddling woman Heaven’s lid glimmers and opens then closes   How scared God must have been when the woman who ate all the fruit of the tree he’d planted was cutting-out each red body from between her legs   The sky, the wound that opens every morning when a red head is cut out between the fat red legs of the cloud   (Does that blood live inside me?) (Do I live inside that blood?)   That woman who walks ahead That woman who walks and rips with her scorching body her cold shadow   New-born infants swim inside that woman’s mirror inside her as white as a snow room the stickysticky slow breaking waves of blood like the morning sea filled with fish   All the Garbage of the World, Unite! (Action Books, 2011), p. 8  

  by Kim Hyesoon

• 

  Unexpected Vanilla

  Cenote   The ceiling sank when the mouth opened. Water streams surged, and a luminous tunnel appeared on the ground. Where did it go? Murky, dim things filled the water surface.   After sweeping the moon with my hand, I peered into a dizzying flower and found its fearful, crowded core. Lights narrowing toward that single dot. White arrows being shot at the undulating ground.     Can I call them wings? Letters I scribbled while falling, papers peeking from ripped envelopes. Sucked into a bottomless song, time turned its back into the darkest farewell. Can I call it a hole that reflects darkness? Or a well that draws up the moon?   Lying inside a mill and waiting for another light, I felt a stream of water passing through my body. It was the river coursing toward the moon, the inside of a grave turned out and bright.           Summer, When Loquat Trees Light Up   Let’s walk with our fingers laced together when the loquats arrive. Wet trees permeating between each finger. When we become jumbled branches with all the yellow we have, our touching palms become the ripped interior of the world. A tree begins when you break the berry and wet some other flesh. That’s why people who’ve put their palm lines together travel inside the same dream.     As our arms start to fall back to our sides, we rub our outer shells and smell the summer spreading through the air. The vibrations rising brilliantly between each tree. Open the jiggling, fleshy fruits and listen to the sound of countless white bells clanging against each other. While the leaves bite the open air with their new front teeth.   We become newly sprouted string instruments and clear our surroundings. A tree’s determination to empty the space between each branch like a chapped finger touching the world at last. When we produce a single superimposed seed with all the bones we have, we hear the season we left behind arriving inside a luminous yellow.           Arriving Lights   Lights were born as I opened my eyes   Someone fogged up my window last night after leaving their shadow behind That night I unraveled dream-bouquets that died down in a whirlwind The lights headed towards humans must still be lost in a distant light-year because   the twinkle in my eyes tremble with the intuition of an incoming planet When flocks of light flying high on eyelashes find a place to settle, a landscape is born     Like an impulse surging in the dark,   I flipped the shaded room into a bright sphere and found a world reachable by trace alone Just as sleep collects in the corners of closed eyes or distant light travels to sway in front of taut lashlines,   some lights shine more vividly when they’re gone When I washed the dewy planet and set it on a sunny windowsill, a human silhouette swayed above my closed eyes           Banan   Banan, with the touch of two gathered hands gripping   the mangled incantations spilled out and parted the lips When soft stems sprout from an abandoned grave, when the hands are buried in soil and stained up to the wrists, the blotted fingers dig into the deepest corners of the body Because the direction of hands determines the whereabouts of a prayer and an earnest plea is the secret crack in the door that redeems the darkness of hands   Where have the foreign fruits spilling unfamiliar scents gone? Or the prayer that created a new species by burying the severed hands of the lover?   Banan, listen to the heart leaking through the clenched hands and pluck the rotting fingers one by one A small, soft bone must be sprouting even from the flowerpot where a person is planted The sensation of this gentle handshake rises into the missing fruit-flesh       Diver I’ve talked about the hand that pushes the head down. The massive body of water, the gaze of the silent deep sea. The floor of the far, far ocean that resolutely spouts darkness wherever it casts its gaze.   The ocean was neither its floor nor the three dimensions of water, but merely the earth’s ceiling. Like a hand far extended to change a light bulb, we lined our bodies abreast and went to find the light said to be the darkest.   Open your mouth wide and kiss the still remaining atmosphere. Humans forget how to speak with only a kiss. Abandon your words and dive into the deep ocean inside the mouth . . . That’s either the ceiling of a person or the floor of an afternoon. The lining of the luminous overcoat worn by the Earth.   About the space where the air bubbles inside the body rapidly expand, where the interior and the exterior invade each other. About the allied forces of color and pressure that a human body must endure.   I’ve talked about them before. We rise to an unfamiliar surface. That was us turning over the ocean cultivated long inside our bodies and offering it to each other.   (Excerpt from pp. 11–13; 16–19.)   Translated by So J. Lee

  by Lee Hye-kyung