the appositeness of the phrase getting off at redfern
struck our roving correspondent with all the force of
teutonic bombs as the limousine bus pulled into that
wind-blasted car-park near the old imjingang station
last stop before a river crossing (that broken bridge
the one that used to go to chosŏn the other mystical
fatherland (that got waylaid by arirang & sŏn'gun
that number one hit with a bullet known as chuch'e
picture then the scene complete with invisible sax as
the tourists wandered around the wrecked locomotives
strolling nonchalantly beside ponds filled with lilies
& over everything piped or were they real sax sounds
appearing as if from nowhere or else an ancestor park
the sax player herself
(the old ajumma
oh broken world
Tag: korea (page 3 of 10)
The thirty-fifth issue of Cordite features new poetry from Australia and Korea. Timed to coincide with the Australia-Korea Year of Friendship, which celebrates fifty years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, Cordite 35: OZ-KO aimed to stimulate creative collaborations between Australian and Korean poets and readers, and features one hundred new poetic works, plus a variety of features and other articles.
Read moreContributors:
KO Un, KIM Kyung Ju, KIM Ki-Taek, KIM Myung-in, KIM Sa-in, KIM Sun-Woo, KIM So Youn, KIM Un, KIM Hyesoon, RA Hee-duk, PARK Ra Youn, PARK Hyung Jun, SONG Kyung Dong, SIN Yongmok, SHIN Hae Wook, SHIM Bo Sun, LEE Seong-bok, LEE Si-young, JIN Eun-young and HWANG Tong gyu.
i'm sitting here writing a poem
(or at least pretending to) while
a photographer shoots me with
a wide-angle lens. of course it's
fake - this isn't even my office,
rather the media lab at yeonhui
in north-west seoul, a thousand
miles from home(s), months
ago, a million species of weird-
ness, like a bastardised poet-model
(po-mo) whoring myself out
for that fabled publicity shot.
the camera flashes, blips, whirrs,
a semblance of a shutter, a studied
pose, the stack of books as props,
the obligatory globe. looking
at the camera now, as i write,
is harder than it looks. somehow
it still feels fake ... especially
in close-up. can the viewer see
what i'm writing here and does
anybody really care? these are
the 'travails' of the modern writer
distilled into one single stream
of consciousness, etched in pencil.
the shoot is done, it's time to go
but fuck it - they'll just have to
wait until my final line is written:
#fml
Balloon and friend 🙂
Mystery girl at Yi Sang House
Baby Davey and Tezwah
Hyung-seok and Baby Davey
Hyung-seok
Characters
Nic at DMZ
Border guard at DMZ
Ives, Barry, Nic and Min-jeong
Kim Un
Jooyoung Lee
Tezwah ay Yeonhui
last night i saw yi sang singing in a noraebang
sounding just like a little sparrow does going
tang tang tacka tacka tk tk tk tk tang it was
such a sad little song that the sparrow sang
the kind that nobody else knew the words to
but don't think that stopped him - no way!
i can hear yi sang still, on the hanok roof
going tang tang tacka tacka tk tk tk tk tang
all day long, in dead silence, like a sparrow.
then i saw yi sang playing starcraft in a pc bang
losing badly, screaming at the screen, the air
heavy with teenage smoke and his keyboard
sticky with grape soda (do you think that stopped
yi sang? never! losing men and energy way too
fast to ever keep up with his competitors going
tang tang tacka tacka tk tk tk tk tang on
their worn-out keyboards all night long,
in networked silence, like a flock of sparrows.
then (if you can believe this) i saw yi sang
soaking himself in a jjimjilbang, his hair like
feathers on the head of a sparrow, spiky and
wet, like a sparrow drinking from the smallest
puddle you can imagine. as if wet feathers could
ever hold him back! don't believe it! yi sang, wet,
sitting in a pool in the jjimjilbang for hours on end,
his little heart racing as if he was flying through
air going tang tang tacka tacka tk tk tk tk tang.
tonight i'm sitting quietly in a corner of a dabang
thinking of yi sang and what he would have made
of the new multibang craze. maybe he would have
liked it, maybe there's a place for a little sparrow
inside a pay-as-you-go multitang, a little space
that goes tang tang tacka tacka tk tk tk tk tang
all day long if you want, if that's what you want,
if that's what makes you happy. don't you think
it's a nice idea? a nice way to re-imagine yi sang?
& tomorrow i'll be sitting in a dvd bang, watching
a movie based on the life of yi sang. i won't see
a single sparrow, i won't even hear the sound
a sparrow makes in a tree in the dark. don't you
know? don't you believe in the sound a sparrow
makes in the dark? never mind, i can remind you,
it sounds like tang tang tacka tacka tk tk tk tk tang,
all night long, in a corner of the sparrow dabang,
and it's the most beautiful, lonely sound in the world.