Poems
"Divine Motivation"
"Farmers Hunt Turkeys"
"Sungmyo for Our Dead Father-in-Law"

Translations
"Touch-Me-Not Finger Polish" – by Hŏ, Nansŏrhŏn
"Sensations of Spring" - by Hŏ, Nansŏrhŏn
"XVII" Excerpted from Poem for Green Tea – by Ch’o Eui

Essays
"Nansŏrhŏn" 

Interviews
Joong Ang Ilbo
Poet's Quarterly

 

 

 

Divine Motivation

Dazzleless in the dark
smooth heart count sounding

through the feet’s muscles—
no radiant edges, no violence

of sparkling light
inside the body. The odorless warmth

in the brain, a snake charmer
so strongly breathing wood

into memories; try to make an edge
in this blood—

there are no gaps
except those from prodding fingers;

the blood accommodates, dissolves
around a push, taking it,

cell after cell, no need
for metaphor in this stream

of creaturing life, see
how its heart rhythmic heat

scares no one, never shatters
or splatters inside its home

of tubed netting, loves nothing,
hates nothing, brilliant or dark,

just red in a drop of light,
a salt tingeing taste of iron

on the buds of the tongue’s tip.

 

 

 

 

Farmers Hunt Turkeys

I don’t want to live next to you
   in the house by the river.

I thought of buying that best
   small strip of land you didn’t

want, because your pregnant
   fiancée kept offering her hand

when you weren’t around, kissing
   all the neighbors with her

cracked lips. You bought
   a lemonwood frame bed for her

and that house, but the farm
   fields have all been

partitioned. The plywood tin-
   sheathed hunting cabins on meager

lots are finished, the farmers
   who know the backwoods

already moved in, hunting turkeys.
   In the village I choose,

ill-mannered grandmothers barge
   through our house, thinking

its humbleness a sign of lack,
   ignoring my wife’s anger

while they call on our back porch
   for their sons to come home.

 

 

 

 

Sungmyo for Our Dead Father-in-Law

By the doors of houses,
fish heads on newspapers
with oranges
and deep-fried sweet potatoes
for the street gods.

The outhouses smell
like farm fields.

We light a cigarette,
smoke some;
lay it on dried grass
at the base
of his burial mound

pour makali into a cup,
drink some,
put it in front of the smoke

lay four paper plates, white
with holly leaves
from Christmas

place oranges
rice cakes—
some made with sticky corn syrup,
others sweetened with ginger,
squid strips
and bananas
on the plates

stand in a row
we bow like Buddhists
three times

eat and drink

ask about the names of trees,
talk about how the jays
gathered and croaked
in old villages
when someone who didn’t live there
would come

or how the children
followed GI’s
saying,
Ajashi, gum please!

Notice how the cigarette is smoked,
and remember how the old man
finished thirty a day

how he got a children’s book
in English,
though no one could read it,
and wrote his daughters’ names
in Chinese
on the first page.

At the bottom of the hill
the copper colored body
of a green headed pheasant
flaps to the heights
of white pines,
trailing its long
brush-stroked tail feathers
two feet behind the breast.

 

 

 

 

Touch-Me-Not Finger Polish
By Hŏ, Nansŏrhŏn

Evening dew condenses on the bridal chamber’s glazed vase—
ten fingers of a beauty, so thin, so long.
Grind flower petals with a bamboo pestle,
roll my painted nails in cabbage leaves,
tie them carefully by candlelight—
my earrings lightly chime.

Wake in the cosmetics room in dawn’s darkness,
tie window curtains—
a pleasure to see Mars on my mirror’s surface.

When picking flowers, a blush swallowtail flits away—
plucking my harp’s strings, surprise
at the sudden falling
of the peach blossoms.
Powder my cheeks, braid and set my long hair—
hard tears near the river reeds.
Slowly, take a brush, and pencil my brows—
the brows fleck with nail polish
as from a soft red rain.

 

 

 

 

Sensations of Spring
By Hŏ, Nansŏrhŏn

Far from his palatial villa, I grow disconsolate—
only letters come on the Han River.
Thrushes trill at daybreak through numbing rains—
a willow sways flirtatiously in the middle season of roses.

Weeds sprout from cracks, crumble cleanly cut steps—
my elegant cither, blanketed by bone-white dust.
Who believes my guest will return in his pine boat?
At the river’s docks, snowy-white water chestnuts in full flower.

 

 

 

 

XVII from Poem for Green Tea
By Ch’o Eui

Alone, solemn with a bamboo flute
and waves of pine,
crisp cold freshens my body,
enlivening my mind.

Only a white cloud
and luminescent moon
are my guests—

an enlightened priest
drinking tea
is most sublime.