My friend, I’d very much like to see you
before your body winters down for god
knows how long this time. Of course, I
know the metaphors. Am I Peter or
the Wolf? A fool with a toy gun, cork-
for-brains, or do we call that bravery
only a child possesses, hunting his power
through a death trial he needn’t adjudicate.
The Wolf is just hungry and winter makes
scant to warm his ribs fat, and what fills
him isn’t Peter’s flavor but a trial that says
death can be overcome by eating what
the season gives up. So have dinner with me.
The two-top at the marquet before I winter
down for good. The wolf dies you say?
Richard, I’ve eaten just enough to hate myself
at the table of my enemy getting his fill to live.
He sips wine after each bite of a rare cut of cow
he nor I could point to in a butchery. He moves
to dessert and the cream rims his mouth
like a ringed planet, a glass of digestif
disturbing an atmosphere I have
no desire to expand. We were
lovers in the way Peter never
entered the Wolf. Sex, or
at least an approximation.
상 차려놓고 배 속 채우는 못마땅한 나
꼴뵈기 싫은 밥 삼키는 원수
한 모금 한 모금 술 삼키고
어떤 살을 씹는지도 모르고
후식 핥는 입술을 토성처럼 만드는 그
남자
살을 모르는 연인으로만 남은
간식을 나눠먹는 남자
—
Jimin Seo was born in Seoul and immigrated to the US to join his family at the age of eight. He is the author of OSSIA, winner of the Changes Book Prize. His most recent projects were Poems of Consumption with H. Sinno at the Barbican Centre in London and a site activation for salazarsequeromedina’s Open Pavilion at the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.