Yi Won Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“A central feature of [Yi Won’s] work is how she sees the world through images rather than meaning. "This feature makes me want to make my poetic language imagery newer and stranger," Yi Won says. The feature of newness and strangeness can be seen in her poems about houses, mirrors, motorcycles, and roads, among others. "The irony of the closest thing being the most unfamiliar seems to provide an unfamiliar and familiar image at the same time. I'm interested in questions such as whether what I see is true or not or whether what I see of myself is really me."”
—from E.J. Koh and Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello’s translators’ notes in The World’s Lightest Motorcycle, the collection from which these poems are taken.
Self-Portrait
I put my head on display at Ilsan Market, but after several days no one bought it
I put my head up for auction online but got a notification that when you click my head an hourglass appears, a loading error
I take my head to a flea market, but somebody blows it up like a balloon and my wrinkled head gradually smooths out and my mouth chews on somebody else's fingerprints and to my great relief my mouth has yet to howl
Before the Refrigerator
I stand before the refrigerator the unknowable
1. Behind me a line exists between the past and future
2. The present opens the silence and hums. The present exists here
3. Existence holds up a secret light above a sturdy body.
Existence is truth
I stand before history the unknowable
If history doesn't open itself, it won't open
From within, the dough of time stands before the rotting of history
My Face Runs
My face runs inside the mirror: The mirror is endless. The landscape never shifts because inside the mirror is all desert. The desert keeps shifting the sand's memory. Wherever it is the desert stays in the centre, the peak, so both the face and mirror heat up. Air escapes from my face, a container of time. My eyes, nose, and lips spread into a whirlpool of time. The mirror that never swallows or throws up my face turns blue. My face is frozen in the mirror because it's running too fast. Inside my face there's water and darkness like left and right feet that only walk if they cross in the opposite direction.
Night's Playground
Late at night there were horses in the playground
Just the torsos of five horses remain in the sand
The horses were white, black, blue, yellow, and red
Metal rods penetrated their heads
Heavy snow fell over the mountainside
There was no message from heaven recorded in the sand
Your Package
Thank you for the package
Every stair to the house is erased
The long corridor as narrow as a cliff
Why is your package so light?
The tattoo-like crescent moon rises
The sky as shallow as a mirror
At night I turn on the light, the window beams
I discreetly peel off the wrapping paper
The window skips a breath
I peel and peel the paper but only see time's bandage
When I caress the package
I can feel its hard edges
Ah! I didn't think a coffin could be so warm
Time and a Plastic Bag
One, black plastic bag, rolls over the road, time constantly, stretches its legs ahead, of the road, now the plastic bag, rolls toward the stairs, and stops, rustling, and pricked for a moment, time straddles on, both sides of the road, as it goes, stopped at the bottom of an advertisement, sign, time keeps on, helplessly, with its clothes unbuttoned, at the front, the plastic bag, rolls into a dark pile of trash, it stays longer, then its shadow moves, digging toward a tree where it stops, here, time and the plastic bag meet, the same color, time leans against the tree, with one leg cut off, at the knee, looking again, time had just folded its leg against the middle of the tree, the plastic bag stays single-minded, under this tree as time bows forward, embracing something, behind its back.
Yi Won is the author of When They Ruled the Earth (1996), A Thousand Moons Rising Over the River of Yahoo! (2001), The World’s Lightest Motorcycle (2007), The History of an Impossible Page (2012), Let Love be Born (2017), and I Am My Affectionate Zebra (2018). Yi Won is currently a visiting professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. She lives in Seoul, South Korea.
