We Close Our Eyes to Kiss

 

Dogs and snow and children are all composed of the same element.

I wanted to hold the snow water inside me

because I wanted that pure power, how wildly it bucks.

If only I could massage my cold, stiff arms

as I tidy up the snowy bowls of runaway dogs.

 

If I rub the pus of a cow into the area

and kiss

and hold hands with an immigrant

and listen to the horns rise on a potato

as I whisper, I love you, I love you, like a snowflake

 

all collars would grow big into hula hoops.

As dead dogs drag out their long tongues, the streams rush,

the mountain range tippy toes, my neck bursts open, and root vegetables stretch their legs,

I am watching you rise to land in the dark.

With a hand to my festering nape,

I grate a cold potato and rub it on like snow.

I kiss the door of your dim room.

 

And I, I will grow recklessly stranger.

I will dip my fingers into a flower, and, pollinated,

pick my belly button.

I hope lilies erupt from my mouth, my ears!

We lock pinkies across the barbed-wire fence, mixing prints.

IDs, national borders, whatever, we laugh like flowers.

 

Words with no feet, ears with no words, cows with no horns.

The frontier of blossoms brims over to the north

and because I fear my brows would fly away like birds

I wear heavy rain boots to kiss your mouth.

 

To become poetry by the clearest area.

We close our eyes to kiss

because the future is brilliant.

Hearts of dogs grow big at the sound of footsteps on the snow

because that is the interval at which a stranger is approaching.

The front gates are the lips of a house. When you ring the bell

the world approaches, instead of fluttering wings.

 

 



 

I Like That When Mom Sleeps,

Grandma Shines Through

 

I like the soft look of giant trees lowering their branches on a rainy day.

I like the elasticity of a raindrop’s sudden bounce from the bridge of my nose, too.

I like the damp leap of a green frog.

I like the open holes in the Chinese characters to the word “exposure.”

When the gunshot of a waterdrop rings out, summer races.

The tree shakes, summer runs with its front drenched.

I like that on the way to the hospital there’s a small flower shop, like hope.



I like that rain falls on everyone equally.

I like that when I wear rain boots the rhythm of a green frog comes to me.

I like a child’s knees inside mine.

 

I like that inside me

the future of a new sprout

does not run, it boldly leaps.

I like that the soles of my feet tickle when I see a puddle of water.

I like my shins that run towards love without a care for spattering puddles of mud.

 

I like seeing the kumquats strewn about haphazardly on the balcony floor.

I like the small build of a kumquat, not a tangerine.

I like the handprints of light that cling to a brass instrument.

I like a promise better than an agreement,

how we lock our most tender fingers with each other.

I like the unstoppable intimacy that blossoms from between a peach and a balsam.

I like it so much I can’t even breathe.

I like that when Mom sleeps, Grandma shines through. I dimly miss the one who passed.

When the peach inside a heart is cut in half,

I like the sorrow of the fruit’s flesh, the fruit knife, the scent, everything.

I can’t stop touching the keepsakes of the dead.

 

When it rains like this and the phone grows quiet,

when love is bruised to a pulp and its raw flesh festers,

inside me, love rains down like lances, strikes my raw flesh, shakes the summer, and drums on the green of the tall tree.

On the streets, on the tents, on my rain boots, on sprouts, on the green frog

your complexion, drawn recklessly,

glittered haphazardly like kumquats and I liked it.

It was beautiful, the face of someone taking a step back.

I ran until my lungs exploded to see the last of that face. It kept the rest of my summer from regrets.

 

 

 

 

 

by Go Myeongjae

 

Translated by Soeun Seo