From Grotesque Weather and Good People, which was published in June by Black Ocean. Translated from the Korean.
Thinking of people
makes us avoid them.
I think we should even avoid we.
Straw spews out when we speak
and becomes a straw doll.
“You left this behind,”
she said. The girl picked up a mirror
that I’d thrown away.
I thanked her
and tried to look glad.
When I come home
I find my room crammed full
of the things I was going to leave on the curb and
the straw we spit up.
I pick off molted cicada skin
just barely hanging on to the ends of the straw.
The song shed us and ran off.
I had to survive.
I crush the emptied body
with my fingers.
Gazing down at the scene,
the song does what songs do.