J a n g O k g w a n —

translated by S u s a n K

To Walk

Roads have spines.

Spines I’ve never noticed

while driving.

Bumpy yellow joints

stretch out amid the sidewalk.

The man there

steps on the spine, wobbles as he steps.

A rubber tongue

appears each time the sole’s lifted.

To get there

it must lick every step of the way.

The midday’s waist throbs.

Hiding in my back

achy joints that need full licking.

Stingrays Fly

in the moonlit night over Namsan peak in Gyeongju.

What on earth are they doing?

Namsan pine trees that grow in twisting knots,

those trees that stretch their knees and bounce mean it’s a full moon.

When that full moon becomes a quiet spotless midday, sees through the insides of flowers, birds,

and rocks, that’s when you’ll drown quietly to the bottom of yourself.

If your ears are clogged and breath stifled

Namsan became an ocean.

When moonlight fills to the clay jar brims

the three-story pagoda roof stone that’s been lying flat on the peak spreads its fins, cries, Damn, and

the black-backed ray soars.

The aged mark that heavily presses down and covers the darkness is the snow-white belly of the ray,

the light a stunning joy.

In the moonlight a thousand stingrays fly and

in each valley a stone Buddha, missing its nose or head

shifts its sitting posture.

Arms as thick as a pine tree bulge, pop, pop.

The Back of the Moon

Some spots I can never reach when I scratch my back. Because I’m from Gyeongsang-do, I can read but never pronounce signifiers like eo and eu. The things I can’t reach or do, that’s the back of the moon. My face I can’t see unless I have eyes on my palms like the thousand-armed bodhisattva, that’s also the back of the moon. I don’t know what I don’t know even if I was tortured with water and electricity, skewered on a stick, like the cry of a cricket that can have its feelers and wings removed, roasted and eaten but never taken by force. The back of my pupils.

Butterfly Kiss

If the flower shaped by a body is a butterfly,

those lips sprout wings, soar from the face.

Can you feel

this subtle tremor as I cross over to you

like eyelids opening and shutting?

Day and night bloom and wither, fold and unfold.

In an eyeblink

two petals touch before falling apart,

airwaves are rolled round, ah, uh, oh, ooh.

The moment a universe opens and closes

your breath like the white powder of the cabbage butterfly

where did it land?

.