Past the telephone exchange
Past the hospital, I dined by the three-way intersection
I deboned a fish and picked at it
There I saw a lizard
Meticulously gnaw the head of a moth much bigger than itself
and toss the rest aside
Half of the day
The other half
A certain cry came across the sky and fell at my feet
I hung across the afternoon, I was placed on a Wednesday
I return to the same place again
But didn’t know how to return to the same time
Things that didn’t exist kept appearing
Things that did exist kept disappearing, not unlike
A toy for a poor child
Unbelievably unbelievable
Flakes of frost that sparkle only briefly in the morning
Half of today
And the other half
In the morning, a cow from across the river gored the other cow
In the afternoon, a mother cat bit her own kittens
Dear frog, you were my toy during my deprived childhood
In those days, I always ended up ripping apart my toy
I followed the frog’s footsteps to the riverbank
By the riverbank, I sank deep in thought
Thought too deep, deep enough to drown in
Pyeongtaek City
where i once stood naked and ashamed
a more naked person appeared and howled unabashedly
i saw the hoarse hands of a man from the horserace track
he told me how he had grabbed a dead foal
by putting his hands inside the uterus
They say that a sick horse is called a meat
while we shared chicken strips, i sat there as flesh
stripped each moment
a man said something like a goodbye to me
while he tidied the shoes at the doorstep
he has protested longer now
than he had worked before the termination
stripped naked,
i could barely put my shoes on
They say even your calluses melt away when you die
i walked with a man who witnessed it
i smoked a cigarette by his side
the train darted confidently on the railway
hope is a torment, said my friend sitting by me
hope is a doormat, so i misheard
that day i met a human being
someplace in me was unexpectedly dug deep
I was no longer afraid
The Distance Between Love and Hope
We
are trying our best to pretend
to be the person that we remember each other to be
that time I almost said that I wanted to be a plant
greeting the raindrops with its face
You,
in my life, I . . . in my life . . .
Don’t say stuff like that
when you’re dead!
My ears are ringing
I shift my face, but too many faces are hung dangly dangling
If I were a tree, then my flowers would be masks
The ends of my branches would be drooping
No, they would’ve snapped
I
must not forget
that I comprehend
We
listen to one another’s stories with our shoulders
forward and back,
raindrops sit wide and thick on
our shoulders
that are stained
Your shoulder, it’s like . . . a window
Your shoulder, does it have . . . an eardrum?
Necessary words
Or unnecessary words?
No way to discern them, so I keep these words to myself
I sit in front of a person who can tell raindrops apart
So I become a raindrop running down the drain
