On waking, I see my body has been rearranged.

“Pillow” is a poem by 2019 Poems in Translation Contest winner Lee Young-ju, translated into English by Jae Kim.Listen to Lee Young-ju read her poem “Pillow” in the original Korean.…

it’s awful of me to interrupt, but I just / need you to understand how certain kinds of wounds can be useful.

There's no cloth hawker in the bazaar / willing to make dirty deals

On a mattress / amidst an armful of hair / a beautiful woman tosses and turns

Their wailing won’t let me sleep, won’t let me sleep . . .

my body, / like a spoon, here on this earth, sweetly scoops out / my brain.

right in the center, / sat the completely empty dharma throne, / richly decorated, the heart’s dream waiting / like a balloon floating through desire

I see your unfamiliar riverbank / and walk toward you.

I dare not use mortal eyes to contemplate you

If I had a spare season, I would’ve rushed to whisper vulgar words

Death is colder than a cup of water on my body, and/ Fonder to me than sand

Its scent is like infirmity, / This soul

my pact with hope is evergreen: / immense this green that makes a heart.

and now my eyes are knives slicing the night to / split the mist

She tattoos the wavering future / on the bare skinned wall.

Tell the sad stories to the sky.

What kind of home is it / where no one dares say / our son’s name

He squinted at me, swaying in the wind. Blood or soil, he asked.

I say change is always painful, / someone has to be the first.

I want to reside in the hard and permanent / so I construct a suite of poems and a man to live inside

The slumber at the edge/ of my well of fever

Because death is stronger than hunger

I would like/ in a faraway language/ to tell you what I don’t/ understand

She tells me not to be / a holy land / or a mine of tenderness

The father’s house is a living language/ Open to guests passing through

This particular Tartar is unbeatable at cards/ Except for whist (not a game for Tartars)

A Black man is always somebody's Black man.

Time, lord of the hours / reigns sovereign

a chair standing by itself on a highway / means its life is over

Dissonant music lingers in the bodiless ear of the present tense

We have found in the deterioration of flesh and bones a spiritual liberation

Hope in the right place, you said, is hope misplaced

Who can escape his own charisma

I know there is the curse of god and the curse of being human

We left toys with wilted smiles on the beds

It had rained, / The lilacs were rejoicing.

no disputes / chroniclers and chronicled as one / reunification, yes, reunification

The light retires to the lamp / and suddenly all is dark again

Soaking in time he sees fallen Estoril

Contemplating a family heirloom, a ruminative Amarjit Chandan finds the past staring back at him.

Morning starts / when lights turn green.

I will not accept this old age / grafted slyly on my body.

I can’t stand that one the way someone with a chronic sinus infection can’t stand abnormal shifts in weather.

you’ve no idea what it means to stand in a sausage line!

The pawn shop, where we sold your rings, / was shuttered.

I hope and despair at the same moment

I / am stolen splendor on a darkened street

“Roadkill’s something you get used to seeing in America”

Still we couldn't stop writing.

We searched for the words. We sipped our tea / looking down the bitter well of the past . . .

These songs to Mother Earth in a major key / are whispers that come from distant forests

We are life, this way

Are they more beautiful than me?

When the thunder of guns tears out the tongue from the nightingale

Hyacinth! Lift your head your head from within the mud

You kindled hope in me. Now fill my cups.

It's this: we’re seeking water / Where there is only thirst.

Everything—including life— / ends when the hands give up.

Our knees were trusting doves; the ribbons in our hair, delicious bait.