Winter Solstice Recipe
By Kim Hyesoon
Translated by Don Mee Choi
It’s snowing
The creek
in the middle of the snowfield
flows like a spine
I make red bean porridge
The dark-red cough in my right lung
flutters like phlegm cake
On my way here
I sent out the invitations
without any names on them
I thought they’d all come
When I shuffle through
the white sheet from above
Daddy, you were standing there
When the red beans are done
I clear Daddy from my eyes
and add sugar
It’s snowing harder
I can see the bird with a flowing spine made of water
stand and shake its huge wings
Tiny fish fall
like snow flurries
The falling fish are
silver-teaspoon-fish
1. Days yet to come
2. Please don’t come, go back
All the sounds vanish from the landscape
What should I write on a Post-it
Daddy, goodbye?
Daddy, don’t go?
I write down the winter solstice recipe
I knead white circles
and keep shoving O O O into the hot porridge
as if I’m shoving myself in
I think to myself, What am I going to do with dead Daddy all night long?
I want to touch his flesh
but it’s a landscape of water and bones
I feel sorry for the days
yet to be born
I throw out the red porridge
onto the snowfield one ladleful at a time
Blood blooms inside snow
Notes:
Read the Korean-language version, "레시피 동지."
Kim Hyesoon, "Winter Solstice Recipe" (Tr. by Don Mee Choi) from Phantom Pain Wings. Copyright © 2023 by Kim Hyesoon. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
