Poetry

Two Poems by Song Huiji

How to Make Crop Circles I thought when I grew up I would live a truly lewd life of a hedonist, dripping in the pleasure of anal sex fucking a different man every night banging four, five strangers until my body shat­tered in pieces until I ran out of breath until I tested positive and died as the universe had me believe  What I’m picturing is Gyu’s face his wavy body hair resembling a wheat field his dry lips that often chafed when not wearing lip balm his hands and feet soaked in heat and sweat, that dampness used to take me to a certain swamp, an eco-park, a swarm, of deep round black eyes I used to encounter amid the blades of water grass Even at the time we walked in the Keondae district and joked if we held hands here all these passers-by would do a double take, the lighting the colors here would all turn into iridescent gunshots, even at the time we looked over at the beach from that Gangneung cafe where waves prey on waves, bite off and swallow each other, a phenomenon that continues that is ceaseless and the toes of our shoes kissed to brave off the chills, Knowing all these could be condensed into duchang [pox] or ddonggochung [fag]  What is it, this thing called beauty, Gyu pondered as I sat next to him Starting a fire in quiet, the call of a thrush, the scent of wet grass, the impoverished hand of darkness grasping us, a day of recalling such things keeps  me as a sharecropper, in my palm is the sharp blade that severed the ancient god’s testicles, the tool that’s long been used to harvest the heads of crops, yet somehow useless in my hand, the old-fashioned life  playing on-screen  like a glacier under the sun like curdling milk; the endlessly  expansive  field Sitting in a cafe by a window framing the aftermath of the flood, I’m waiting for Gyu who is stubbornly unarriving, I sing him, reenact him, peel the skin of my future with him, layer by layer, then in a blink a paper cut, blood drips drips drips and pools, breaks ripples upon ripples, I do not moan, I do not look away, as that is my share, only that much is my  all     Memory Étude In first grade, I wrote this under “dream” in the class anthology—poet.  In second grade, I discovered it in a rice paddy—an abandoned duck carcass eaten to the bare bones. There I whispered to myself. Here you were. I thought I recovered it.  In third grade, I wrote my first story. In a lined notebook with a teddy bear on its lime green cover—titled “A Dreaming Bear.”  In fourth grade, by observing red tulips planted in a line along the school flowerbed, I wrote a quintain and wanted to get slapped in the face out of nowhere. I wanted to confess my sins and beg. Until full bloom.  In fifth grade, as I witnessed a dark, crooked bone protruding from my body, being alive became as bizarre to me as the Bully a Plant experiment.* Every time I opened my mouth It spewed out dry leaves. A whole slew. An invitation. Thanks to which I realized the exis­tence of my garden in the deepest corner of myself. Here you were. I thought I recovered it.  In sixth grade, I promised myself to become a healthy homosexual.  * There’s a pair of sprouted onions. One is a positive-word onion. The other is a negative-word onion. To the positive-word onion you only say positive words; to the negative-word onion you only say negative words. The experiment was based on the premise that negative words would have negative impacts on plants’ growth, but at the end of every experiment it was always the negative-word onion that had grown creepily lush.

Poetry

Two Poems by Song Jin Gwon

When Will the Adults Come Many days and many years of moonlit mornings and sunlit nights have passed Cattle and horses broke out of their pens and tore the house apart even taking over the master bedroom The rooster became the hen white cloth blackenedwhile ten, twenty, one hundred, one thousand suns sizzled in the sky and big floods and big fires came one after another leaving everything in shambles leaving only us in the world with Dad gone away and Mom gone away looking for Dad I comfort my crying baby sibling to sleep Just ten more nights and Mommy and Daddy will come Hush little baby don’t you cry The little kitty is already dead Hush little baby don’t you cry Tucking them in and comforting them and singing them a lullaby But when will the adults come for ten nights and twenty nights have passed and countless ten nights have passed   Oxen Dream On nights when the ox comes to me my heart stirs so that I cannot sleep On nights when the ox wearing arrowroot blossoms tiger lilies and even daylilies on its horns comes to me I cannot curl my leaves like a silk tree nor shut my doors like a squash blossom and sleep  Aigo you came all this way to come back home Mom comes out of the kitchen and caresses the ox Dad quietly runs a besom along the ox’s back then boils cattle feed with plenty of soybean pods and rice bran On nights when the ox comes to our house the light stays on in the barn all night the yard glows bright as broad daylight and word is quickly sent to the owners that the ox is here for shouldn’t the ox stay the night seeing as it came back home  On nights when the ox that was sold off to Jeombo’s in the upper village comes back home On nights when the ox comes to me with my dead Mother and Father in tow— like a prickly-ash tree peppered with swallowtails my heart sways so that I cannot sleep like a jar holding a live carp my heart ripples so that I cannot sleep 

Poetry

An Heeyeon Selected Poems

White Space  Write Someone trips on a stone, before your eyes, he’ll brush the dirt off his pants, get up  You watch him standing for ages till he vanishes, and you learn half-drawn faces have even more expressions  He bursts straight into your room,  says the blizzard was fierce, huddles on your floor, asks it for heat, comes back covered in mud, breaks the window, screaming, “Why don’t you know how to think anything happy?”  I want to hear news beyond my power to see: how many fingernail scratches the word cliff contains, how much more that means these submerged stairs must darken  He departs for the poles in my stead, then I imagine the next scene for the people around the table  I want just one book, nothing written inside,  night, open my eyes, ride a swing about to snap,  and every single second make new sides   So Whose Bite Mark Is This? On a clattering train, no memory of boarding,  we trusted we were headed somewhere Each envisioned in our hearts that shooting star  Where the flame began When we buried a white dog in white snow, knell tolling low  Days of nothing but white past the windows dragged on, suspecting what’s real can’t be seen  Someone voiced concerns   Have we jumped the rails?    Was there ever really a meteor?   People demanded proof   Started doubting that whiteness  Their faith  ground the train from dash to halt Doors opened, people poured out Hundreds of huge boulders lay strewn helter-skelter  Plenty of these in our own backyard!   Coming from afar, we thought the winds would shift; the boulders slowly lost the light   The train’s disappearing! someone shouted, alarmed,  and we watched it wide-eyed  Feet firmly grounded   To return, now one had to believe in those black boulders’ beauty   Enormous Life Though I dashed down the stairs I didn’t sprain my ankle Today such things amaze  Do you think unhappiness is easy? The bus came on time but I arrived late, looking up how crackers differ from biscuits  I let two summers stream by Or actually, set just their rainy days adrift It’ll all get caught, so why wonder about the bus stop’s feelings, whether spaces and traces each know the other exists?  When you burn a log, its catching amazes, so I spend a whole evening staring at the fire  It would have been nice had the flame burned only the log, would have been nice had the wind not helped, pot boiling and boiling  Faced with this world’s roiling cadence, I keep missing buses  Mysterious, the woodpecker’s bill, why we count rice in grains, the word ripple  I don’t know what’s in the pot But I rehearse switching amazing’s to mysterious’s as I tend it Not being a quitter matters so much to me   Listening Room We were discussing an island. They say there’s a museum that holds eighty thousand heartbeats. And a forest with little bells dangling from every branch. Imagine standing there some dark windy day. If it were you, where would you want to go first? Want to hear your own heartbeat recorded? Feel a thousand bells shaking at once over your head? You, downcast: Either’s fine for now, but after you die, it’ll all change. I scoop you from the current of thought and seat you on a chair. You know we’re alive right now? Let’s focus on reading the emotion in the sound. We talk again about every kind of sound in the world. Stare at black-and-white photos of a choir. Wish we could hear what they’re singing. Probably not a single one still alive. Taken in the early 1900s. They say sand shifting in the desert sounds like it’s weeping. Know what they use to make it sound like rain when they redub dialogue? You tell me not to answer, cover my mouth. Is it still the sound of rain if you know it’s fake? Don’t you think the sand was crying all the same? Am I broken now? Is this my body? I can’t believe it . . . If you go down that road, there’s no sound in the world that isn’t weeping. Drilling into the earth, chopping fish, trees falling in hurricanes . . . A fire helicopter passes overhead. This room for relistening to every sound in existence. I think there’s a big fire. You take my left arm and feel my pulse, like some quack. Still, I think this sound’s the world’s saddest. Because you can’t overdub this. The sound of blood swirling. Tempo of blood. Where’s the maestro? Overhead once more the chopper flies.   In-Ear The current quickens · I’m heading toward Saneum · Ringed by five mountains, with a name meaning rich in shadow, whenever I say Saneum, Saneum aloud, I end up guessing the height I can scale when I go looking for that um tone · Even wondering, Does a height like that really exist, because San is San, -eum is -eum, with the current, with the current, I wanted to unfurl the road from San to -eum · I imagine a fire unquenched even underwater, believe in my buoyancy, comprehend derivation, and soon after, the current picks up · The mountains birth shade, shade births chill, and every gap in the night I clung to a boulder slightly smaller than me, waited for permission to just plop down, that it’s fine to love · Saneum, Saneum, imagined planting a tangerine tree there, sketching a railroad · Won’t something run down those rails? · Won’t a world be made? · Days dreaming of landing, straightaway a light gleams, warning not to deviate from the route · The current quickens · A locomotive called Morning’s spurred ceaselessly on · I lean on a boulder smaller than me, watching Saneum receding · The wind’s mouth blowing out every lit candle, torrential downpour, raking both cheeks, landscape of five mountains sinking into the sea · I don’t know how to slow this current, and Saneum fades to a sound that can never return, and as I clasp this boulder smaller than me, it and I, I and it, I wonder who’s really the smaller · Only paper, knowing the press of my pen, remembers I’m here · Sheet music notates each day that floats off on the current, but only the sound of treading the floor and returning becomes a glance piercing paper · But I am headed for Saneum · I’ll convince you why a tangerine tree shakes in my navel every time Saneum comes to mind · To shake your own tangerine with the sound only my ear hears, and by shaking, show you your Saneum ·   Gooseberry, Gooseberry I imagine wearing white sneakers, running full speed ahead  To deliver them to you on your gooseberry farm  Today, too, you receive a cold glare and bored, slice gooseberries in half  Too sour to eat raw, hand-stinging  From here to there heaped mountain-high, freighting carts, starting all over again  You mutter, No one’s rescuing me I hope the world ends and you dream if you close your eyes opening them will bring you an ungooseberried world  I kick off my shoes, lace them on you When I tell you to get them filthy as you want, you crush with the toe box one beadlike berry that fell to the floor You loathe how they squelch when you squish them  This world barely cares when someone goes missing, and I mimic you, halving a berry, and then you advance like a bloodhound  Those were great shoes You came back You did  And as your back walks toward the orchard the seabed’s story makes you quake  Gooseberry, gooseberry, growing in ripe Though beg you not ripen we may Gooseberries grow only on gooseberry trees And dreaming of others is vain  To those who ask why on earth you’re humming, you answer, I’m back from world’s end The deep-sea fish swimming in your pocket, no one would believe  Tonguing * Because I can’t believe I exist, I walk  And walking I discover a deep black part,  so truly black The moment I peer at it I feel like my body has caught on fire  The zebra’s stripes, the pony’s smallness— are they cold? Are they hot?  I too have spots only I can see Small specks caging the elephant of sadness  I’m practicing my fingering Tonguing, tonguing When I lift my hand the sound of the beast weeping seeps out I might close, might open, might dam up, might flow, through force of will, my will  What kind of performer will you be? To answer the world’s question I go on from fire to embers, embers to ash I exist, and therefore, noise  I exist, and therefore, sheet music  When I pull myself out from within me the birds perched on the wire fly off  My instrument’s stored in its case Ready to take out at any time but not to resound any louder  Its sound when shut alone in its box Torn summer wings secretly mended A road toward that sound with neither ash nor trace remaining The further it goes, the lusher the recording * Use of the tongue to control the flow of air when playing a wind instrument   Dimensions Variable I’m contacted for evidence I have a soul  and stand up Today I shall cook bell pepper  Left alone, it’d go ghastlily rotten, yet plated it’s something to stare at,  so I prep the equipment Just a plastic bread knife  Fine if there’s no other options! Even if the knife cuts with bumps The key’s not misreading boll for bell And trusting when you slice there’ll be a time when it slices  Like a caramel tree quakes in the wind  What does a pepper become when sliced? Sliced pepper And what becomes of sliced pepper? A pepper you were going to do something with And what of that something you were going to do?A pointless pepper And what awaits a pointless pepper? What is not bell pepper becomes non-bell pepper And then? And then?  Sings, like a caramel tree quakes in the wind  I love peppers’ vegetal scent, their lack of heat for a capsicum Do you know the plant bears blossoms? They symbolize waste-of-breath Every time I get a dunning call to prove I have a soul I love my pepper blinking its big eyes, rolling to hide in corners  What did you make? What is its genre?  Well, this, this is my soul . . .  Before I even start explaining, the door bangs shut, the ringing won’t quit  Despair builds no stairs when it comes   Toward Saneum 1. Terrified each night by buglers popping up,  outpacing me, the rising intervals’ blaring shriek at my back,  the trumpets’ cry, their cry, I plugged my ears, wanted to go back to being unborn  Toward Saneum *where I first started, um, um, searching for a story not yet spun into words,  I plunged into the water  2. It took time to get used to the watery dark, passing the vaguening gaps from yesterday to today to tomorrow Did I know what I was looking for? I harbored doubts,  but as a coral reef neared I finally realized what I’d been looking for, wanted to find  I shot out questions, How much can you hide me? Can you blot out my stripes, my colors?  The colorful corals told me I was large, so large they couldn’t conceal me  3. I needed to find a bigger reef  I want to hide That’s how I’ll come to understand myself, light passing through my hair  Here, each time their too-many names touch my fingertips, they tickle awake  I stand once more before the corals Are you the reef that can put up with me? —this time unspooling when all color’s leached from these bone-bundlelike bright white corals  . . . um, a note, a tone, tale of how I waited for those corals I faced to be rediscovered and got this deep eye-gleam  One tone, spark hanging from its tail, circles beneath the surface and disappears  4. White vase, white paper, white chalk, I think of clean white things  Close my eyes, hold my breath, feeling nothing but ocean and me existing,  submerged with neither an end nor even a drop of water  All this happened though I merely jotted Saneum on a blank sheet of paper  That moment, blank paper adrift on the sea became a white bird and flew off * Name of the place where my parents first met. It no longer exists.   Walking the Carrot Field Here to there’s all your land, he said. I’ve never had so much. I close, then open my eyes. There it is.  What’ll I plant? Hope whatever I do’s harmless. I blink, and something starts growing. I’m a grower.  A warm color, orange. Gives vim, vigor. He said it won’t be long before I harvest the carrots. I was mulling whether I even want carrots and stumbled a second but  trusted the spillage so small no one would notice.  But the carrots were watching. The gleam in my eyes. Shining, cutting through me.  My carrots dug into the soil, took in a mole. It had eyes.  I’ll give you a bag. Take as many as you like. Too good to eat alone. I relished the crop, then gave up the land, on which  Now I face the mole’s eyes  Here I am  Carrot patch unfurling under moonlight  A long story only beginning as a short one draws to an end    

by An Hee-yeon

Poetry

Two Poems by Lee Silbi

Tempering People board the cruise ship one by one. Each stands holding a mirror. I see only my own face. You see only your own face as we cross the sea. What the ship carries is corn. By the time the people have eaten all the corn, the cruise ship arrives at the Domino Kingdom, built from corncobs. The place reeks of saliva. For the lovers who bit and sucked at each other, from now on, every object in the world will look like a wooden club to them. And yet, feeling as though your whole body has been beaten is not the same as actually being beaten, so the lovers endure.  At the dock, one person remains. He watches steam rising from the hot sea. Now and then, he thought he wanted to love. A wish that shakes his whole body, afraid it might leap out through his breathing hole, he holds his breath and quietly eats his corn, while a seagull circles overhead, scheming to snatch his wish away. Sea slaters swarm over an abandoned slipper. Inching its way between the breakwaters before vanishing, the orange sunset cools the waves. Children gathering shells covet each other’s finds, then shove each other.  The one who didn’t board the cruise ship has never broken anyone else’s bones, has lived breaking only his own, but the children pointed fingers. He has no care at all for other people, they said. Other people? Caring? He wants to know what he does not know, and wants to go on not knowing what he does not know, and diligently tears apart his corn. He dips the cob, stripped clean, into the seawater. It dissolves and disappears.   Damage Holding a broken hourglass, you came. Life is too short, you said, having sought me out. A night when white and red grains of sand tumble down quarreling, pencil lead began to grow from your shoulders. In the hours the lead pushed through, sharp and pointed,  you were in pain. Rolling on the floor, you scored long dark lines across the boards. Because I couldn’t ask you to wait, because there was no time to wait, I pressed a large sheet of paper to your shoulder and rubbed. As long as I kept rubbing, no new lead rose to replace it. I’ll give you paper from now on, every day. Good paper.  If I thought I was enduring it for one person, the night is long—  It is an act of believing that black lines filling the paper will be enough to fill the night.  Even so, I didn’t say let’s get used to this,  didn’t tell the one who grabs my shoulder and rolls with me about the joy of holding out through the night.  Because new drawings to be drawn and new poems to be written come in the morning. Because some music must be heard at high noon to be truly shocking. Because shock must be left to flow.  I shattered the hourglass and spilled the sand.  A mountain scattered with white and red sand—  From a distance, it looks pink. Do you find that romantic? Picture you and me, very small, climbing that mountain. With every step, pink cascades down in a rush. The very last grain of sand to fall at the foot of the mountain, will it be white? Or red? We agree to wonder about that until morning.

by Lee Silbi

Poetry

Two Poems by Hwang Sung Hee

The Umbrella’s Feelings Why did you steal someone else’s umbrella? I didn’t steal it Didn’t you just get off the subway with his umbrella? Yes, I did Then how is it not stealing? He just watched me get off with his umbrella So that makes it not stealing? But he just sat there, didn’t say a word even when I pulled the umbrella out from under his legs and took it with me You shouldn’t have taken it from the beginning If the umbrella really mattered he would’ve stopped me That makes it okay to take it like that? Someone other than him reported it and you’re the one who came running after me Thanks to you, you missed the train and he’s gone now Everyone here will think that you’re the owner of the umbrella So that makes you innocent? Why is everyone letting him be? He’s a very mean person And you a good one? I’m a compassionate one, I preserved the umbrella’s dignity Then why have you been crying this whole time? I don’t know whether the umbrella will like it There’s no way to know   What Happens When You Read a Signboard There were letters on a signboard, I read them and the letters disappeared The sign went blank and only the frame remained Look at that, the letters on the sign are gone Having said this I turned around but there was no one by my side I hurried to make a place beside me and set you there I said, I read the letters but they disappeared For a moment you were puzzled by having sprung into existence But then you said that it’s only natural for the letters to be gone once the reader’s gone too If I’m gone both the sign and the letters will become something that never existed, which would be revenge enough on the sign and the letters But hurt that you suggested that I, of all, should be gone first I decided to remove you before the sign Without any scream or struggle you disappeared in an instant, which made me sad and got me in tears It seemed that I was responsible for the beginning and end of all this In eyes full of tears everything blurred into stars I couldn’t read anything with such eyes for a moment, and all was good

by Hwang Sung Hee

Poetry

Two Poems by Shin Yi-in

Prosperity of the House of Fireplace My surname is Fireplace. When I introduce myself that way, I sound like someone who enjoys boasting . . . but it is plainly true, and because I know it’s nothing to boast about, I’m writing it down anyway. “Fire is warm, and a little unsatisfying, and if you sit facing it for long enough it makes things grimy . . . yet unmistakably, it gives.” My parents kept feeding it log after log so I would never learn what it is to go without, trying to protect the fireplace they had built, their fireplace, theirs alone. But when it came to the questions the child not yet born would fling at a name they hadn’t chosen for themself, they had no way to answer.  “Fire hurts, it stings, it’s terrifying . . . unmistakably, it kills everything.” Stubborn Mr. Ashheap was my first lover. Anyone who tried to correct Ashheap’s way of understanding, said Ashheap, along with Ashheap’s family, in one voice, could not truly love Ashheap. But because they were Ashheap, they couldn’t help it: they wanted me. Rude fireplace, ill-omened fireplace, filthy fireplace, stupid fireplace, a fireplace that won’t die, a fireplace that won’t go to ruin. Crushing pale fingers, scribbling in places no one can see.  After that I began to love ferociously. I took anyone into my body, without discrimination. Among them were hard young ones that stayed a long time, like brass bowls, like diamonds, but in the end I melted them away, or drove them out, or turned them into ash. And that left me with a bleak, unlucky feeling, as though it might mean I wanted Ashheap. Rude fireplace, ill-omened fireplace. Once you make ash, the same words come back. And somehow the flames always sink, one way or another. So, after all, is fire simply that kind of thing? I’m a fireplace, and yet I don’t hurt, I don’t sting, I’m not frightening. I’ve never died because of fire. I can’t even move away from fire. On days when I blazed up, when I burned high, I sincerely wanted to crumble down and lie there. I wanted to live a little less. I wanted to remain as tiny, free particles. I wanted to become graffiti. But I didn’t want to become a dirty wall that gets graffitied on. I wanted to feel pain, to learn fear, to curse, cleanly, fully, to my heart’s content, to want what I want, and in wanting, to grow lighter . . .  My surname is Fireplace. When I introduced myself, they said, “See? You’re a fireplace too, aren’t you? You can’t help being a fireplace.” The fireplaces gathered, laughing, as if they could see straight through me. They were the sort obsessed only with the great hole at their center, a hole you can throw anything into, a hole you can look straight through. They were the sort who try to hide a hole by pressing it to another hole, scheming a splendid life in which holes don’t look like holes at all. I made a family with a fireplace and lived out the rest of my days, warm, and a little unsatisfied, turning no one into ash; standing, wall facing wall, in a life where no one could ever step inside anyone else.  The Dream MachineThe fault began with me. That day I pulled out a large, secret-shaped hammer, one I’d wanted to tryfor a long time, and brought it down on the machine with a crash. It was a machinethat had run for ages, solidly, smoothly. The person who had been running it with me started in shock and fled. Hewent to my friends and impressed on them that I was hiding a big hammer,that I might not be in my right mind. When the machine heard that news, it grew sad. Kids, I’m fine. Get along.If you start fighting and stop handling me, I’ll become nothing but a uselessheap of scrap, unable to make anything at all. Turning the worst possibilitiesover and over, it slowly began to rust from the inside. We couldn’t tell what was best to do. To sell it, or to repair it before themachine got any worse; who ought to pay, who ought to be responsible, whoought to be compensated, and whether, once all that was done, our relationshipwould improve. We were decent people, people with shame. We felt guilty for breaking themachine, and yet in our hearts we didn’t want to believe we were the cause, sowe shut our mouths and didn’t speak of it again.Later I met a few shameless people, and then—then I learned: you’re supposedto grind your teeth and insist, It’s because of you. It’s your fault, andmake the other person pay the price. If you do that, does it become as if nothinghappened? As if, once you’re the only one smiling, everything can returnto the way it was? As if you could try running the machine again . . . ? I was filledwith remorse, butWe had too much shame. We couldn’t let go of apology or embarrassment.We couldn’t even lay it on each other, so no one’s hands were free.Both of us, exactly alike, had pawned both hands to shame. In the end noone could hold the other, could pat them and say it’s okay, could joke, couldslap, could even speak—watching the other’s face, hesitating. And the machine,from a certain day on, was left untouched, out of reach.Then one day, when I was free again, I remembered that time. Alone, I hovered,unsure, and opened the machine’s lid. Today, staring into it, I write here:It’s because of me.It’s my fault.The old, broken machine remains as it is.Quietly, I set both hands upon itand thinkof what it was, exactly, and how heavy, the thing those hands held for so long.

by Shin Lee-in