Small Person

If you speak in a small voice you become a small person

A small person is a small box

a personal space

a clay jar, a chamber pot, a blanket tented over knees, to advance darkly inside

not on the asphalt but under it

pushing and pushing the revolving door, to return

to turn and turn, to become the silence in the whirling

a home for dust

a broom

The small person takes the small universe outside

Winter walk, shells and peels underfoot

things used and discarded by the season

Small greens lean greens starved greens drunk greens

lifting up their faces

A small person disappears when called

A small person’s river, a small person’s bridge

no one crosses

If you talk about trivial things you become trivial

Open your notebook and there

a square for small people

flattened, not dead nor alive

these names

a trivial list walking around

wearing little nametags, stepping teeny tiny

When spring comes you have to clear out what’s not spring

If you eat the heat haze you die

says someone

and the small person, slowly, eats it

Sewing Machine and Oven

Growing old 

is putting on time’s crumpled clothes

On the corner, the smell of bread wafts

as the time to buy bread disappears

It’d be nice if smiles could be baked

Go up somewhere high

and memory disappears

Come down with your shoes off

and your back curls round

your face thrust into dead time

Was it April when Grandma died

that fourth

and mortal month

There’s no one to ask

Everyone who knows you and me are dead

or more distant than the dead

You need strength to love–

The person who said that isn’t here, on April Fool’s

she died

It’d be nice if her back, her face, her smile

could be baked

Love and aging and sadness–

What’s the strongest of the three

I bring over a scale to find out but

strength is not weight

strength can’t be lifted

I want to sit in front of the sewing machine

sewing nothing 

If someone knocks to go get bread with me

I’ll hand over the crumpled clothes

and shut the door

You are an outfit crumpling in front of me

Love was just a joke– 

If you make excuses

I’ll draw something like a broken forehead

I’ll smile

I’ll bake a smile

by Park YeonJoon

Translated by Hedgie Choi