Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon

Author:Kim Hyesoon [Hyesoon, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811231725
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2023-05-02T00:00:01+00:00

Bird Shaman

When bird arrives

I’m like a distant punching bag, trembling in fog

You all have lovers in your embrace

but I’ve bird in mine

Those with birds can recognize others with birds

We greet each other

Amongst us, as birds

we point to a certain dance and say, That dance is

birdless

I’m clutched by bird

the way the veins of leaves clasp the green color

Ten fingers over its eyes, bird is soaking wet

I’ve let go of someone

When I arrived on the island, I kept having dreams about birds

Birds hanged by the neck with legs drooping down

One day I stared at the birds and

it seemed as if they had something to tell me

The old woman who owned the inn replied in the island’s dialect

when I told her about my dreams

I played the recording of the old woman to a student working

at a coffee shop

Many people hung themselves on the mountain

Old woman’s daddy and mommy hung themselves too,

explained the student,

She doesn’t want to be buried

on the mountain after she dies

Uniforms by day

Bayonets at night

ordered the ghosts to stand in line

and told them to slap each other’s cheeks

Ghost Son was told to slap his Ghost Daddy

if he didn’t, he’d get stabbed

Hit me! Harder! Ghost Daddy shouted

at his Ghost Son,

said the student who worked at the coffee shop

I paced back and forth like the punching bag in fog

thinking about bird of a different era

what spectacle it might have seen

Birds stretch and contract their wings

I wondered,

Who tied the birds up

by their feet on the tree?

Then I became curious

When the eyes of bird and human meet

who gets to be the soul of all creation?

When I land on an unknown planet where only birds live—

how should I ask them?

What memories do you treasure from your time here?

bird bird

bird bird

bird bird

bird bird

bird bird

bird bird

Bird wailed like the shattering mountain

Trembling like a punching bag in fog

someone who had let go of someone

said to another who also had to let go,

Bird,

Birdie, please tell me what you’ve seen

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