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