LTI Korea 
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SIWF 
Two Poems by Lee Young-ju scrap
by Lee Young Ju
Translated by Jack Saebyok Jung
May 29, 2025
Forest of Forgetfulness
I imagine everything I’ve lost is pushed ashore here. Hello. The fragments of loss pile up in this place and become the vast you. They say there is a forest of dead cedar trees in Taiwan. Trees that died standing, never snapped nor toppled. Once dead, they turned into a tourist spot for the living to wander through. Hello. Now that the river’s flow is dammed, I can see you: mist rolling in through a rusted wire fence. Broken cement. An ashtray. A crumpled medicine pouch. A heavy smell hangs in the air. You, trembling in the cold. Your breath, embracing the living, turning into water. Why did you send that sort of letter back then? Saying you were fine, that you’d baked cookies and would bring them over, then dropping the envelope with my address into the depths. I imagine everything I’ve lost drifts to that place. A vast forest of ghosts. I like writing replies. When your breath slipped through countless trees, I wrote letters no one would ever receive. You’ve already received all the replies I’ve lost. Between cedar stumps, rain-soaked ghost wings still cling, their torsos rolling to the ground, becoming the intimate face of the soil. What, then, is interior? Hello. In the cedar forest where you reside, I’ve caught a new sickness of the soul. What is a dead soul made of? And the great wings of yours that hold me—
—The original Korean version of this poem first appeared in the 2024 Summer Issue of Daesan Culture quarterly magazine.
Brunch Time
Soo never looks in the mirror. She once said that in a nightmare, she removed her heart—and felt far happier afterward. After eating Indian curry prepared by a Pakistani chef in Daheung-dong, Soo’s face grew more and more transparent. I realized happiness doesn’t stem from the heart. Soo always wore a faint smile. She said this city, where everyone is mixed together, is so beautiful she can’t help but smile. When everyone blends, nothing special remains, she said. Still, having nothing in the place where something used to be. . . I faltered. I was eating spinach curry, exactly like the green food the alien spat out in the scene from that old movie, Rubber Man’s Finale. Come to think of it, healthy food is pretty much alien food. When Soo blew on clumpy rice, a few stray grains fluttered onto my mind. Even though this rice wasn’t sticky, it clung like a leech. I laughed loudly. Soo spilled a bit of the complimentary tomato soup; as a red stain spread around where her heart had been, she smiled quietly. There’s only water in my name, Soo said. She loves her name. Since water never stays fixed, there’s no reason to look in the mirror. Like a wave, she is only beautiful—her misfortunes flowing away and leaving happiness behind. Soo calls herself herself. I summoned the Pakistani chef in my most miserable voice: These grains of rice are burrowing into my heart. How do I get rid of them? If my heart goes necrotic, can I get a refund? In Rubber Man’s Finale, when the main character’s brain started oozing out, he undid his leather belt and wrapped it around his head. The hairy chef, dressed in a tracksuit, laments he’s got nothing to tie up. I’m wearing a dress, my shoulder drooping because one corner of my heart is collapsing. Soo, why did you stick these grains of rice on. . . I can’t finish my sentence; my right side caves in. Soo asked me to be sure her name is written clearly on her tombstone, insisting on using the hanja character for water 漵, which is pronounced Soo. Because water, she said, is the beauty that can even wash nightmares away. I wonder if I can keep that promise. Soo is already dead—yet still eating her curry, happily.
Translated by Jack Saebyok Jung
Writer 필자 소개
Lee Young Ju
Translator 번역가 소개
Jack Saebyok Jung
Jack Saebyok Jung is a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow and the author of Hocus Pocus Bogus Locus (Black Square Editions, 2025). A Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he co-translated Yi Sang: Selected Works (Wave Books, 2020), winner of the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work. His next book of translation, Kim Hyesoon’s Lady No, will be published by Ecco in 2026. He teaches at Davidson College.
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