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Two Poems by Choi Ji Eun scrap

by Choi Ji Eungo link Translated by Soeun Seogo link December 4, 2024

Two Poems by Choi Ji Eun 이미지

Author Bio 작가 소개

최지은

Choi Ji Eun

Choi Ji Eun began her career by winning the 2017 Changbi Prize for New Figures in Literature. Her publications include the poetry collection Just As the Spring Night Ends, The Poem Is Too Short and the prose collection To Our Summer and several other works.

The Summer You Walk Alone In

 

I tried my best.

 

Will I get to say that some day

I’m still in the summer when I hate, scold, and abuse myself

 

You did try your best.

 

Whenever I thought of the love I’ve had in my heart for ages, I heard

the voice that brought me to a stop

 

I am a surviving relative of a suicide victim

 

In the summer, years ago, Father’s call rang out, then ceased

When that sound suddenly starts flooding into my head

I, too, want to quit

 

The summer, dazed

 

But for some reason

the love that stops me in my tracks is also in my summer

 

Last winter, in a dark alley

I cut my hand on a tin can

A cat with a lost eye blinked twice at a time

felt touch without touching

talked on and on without speaking, 
that night

 

I wanted to say it out loud for the first time

 

You did try your best.

 

Every morning at seven

I wash the apples, grind the coffee beans, 
boil the water,

and check today’s weather

 

I greet today’s weather through today’s window

Today, I decide to write today’s poem for tomorrow’s poem

I haven’t shown it to anyone yet, it’s my private poem, my private game

 

I continue my private play

 

love and waves love and sunlight love and owl love and school love and playground 

love and leaf love and waterdrop love and concert love and pediatrics love and Mangwon love and hide and seek love and rock love and twelve o’clock love and white dog love

and first snow love and Rodin love and plum love and cloud love and nap love and

lullaby love and viola love and glass cup love and bouquet love and mint candy love and hibiscus love and

ulster blue dwarf ulster blue dwarf…

 

if sadness smears the end of the endless play

I decide to stop for a while

 

so that another layer flows by

 

I promised

 

How will today’s weather flow by

 

Expect drizzle in the afternoon.

 

 

 

Thirteen

 

Every girl is in the midst of motion sickness

 

The older sister

sets afloat on the water tea leaves that are supposed to release hematoma

The younger sister watches the tea water turn yellow

The tea leaves swim like goldfish

 

The older sister keeps

asking to watch her back

She says girls with motion sickness need to watch their backs

in case their fish are discovered

 

A clear glass cup

Red fish pours

 

The girl dreams of laying fish and

 

next to the dozing girl

an empty glass cup

 

inside

 

the light of summer sways

 

 

 

by Choi Ji Eun

 

 

Translated by Soeun Seo

 

Writer 필자 소개

Choi Ji Eun

Choi Ji Eun

Choi Ji Eun began her career by winning the 2017 Changbi Prize for New Figures in Literature. Her publications include the poetry collection Just As the Spring Night Ends, The Poem Is Too Short and the prose collection To Our Summer and several other works.

Translator 번역가 소개

Soeun Seo

Soeun Seo

Soeun Seo is a poet and translator from South Korea and a current fellow at the Michener Center for Writers. They co-translated Kim Yideum’s Hysteria (Action Books, 2019) and is currently co-translating Kim Min Jeong’s Beautiful and Useless, which will be coming out in October 2020 with Black Ocean.

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