Kim Hyesoon's For the Next Instant's I (trans. Cindy Juyoung Ok)

For the Next Instant’s I

translated from the Korean

I hold a cigarette in my left hand and
when I light a lighter with my right hand
the diapered infant I wears a white collar
and the schoolgirl I wears high heels and
the stumbling I tonight,
the swearing and drinking with you I just
now, the I that is everyone
holds a cigarette in my left hand and
I light a lighter with my right hand

After the next instant when I exhale smoke from
my nostrils much comes out in two stems
to let off white smoke

Again if I lace the wine glass between my fingers
and pour drink into my mouth
it’s dozens of fingers sandwiching the wine glasses and
dozens of mouths the alcohol is poured into while
among even dozens of hearts the diapered infant I and
the next instant’s I put the diaper on the baby in my loudest voice

Then after the next instant you wake my cheeks! To alert me and as I stand
I, I—I—I—I—I—
even among them the over-thirty woman I is the very last to stand
sounding dozens of waves
with straight fingers like a one-year-old fern
two, three, four year olds on that finger with
even a ring on the straight finger
pointing at me, the dozens of women
in a shrieking voice
I said I mean me!
I’m saying don’t touch me!

Cindy Juyoung Ok teaches creative writing at UC San Diego and edits poetry at Guernica. More of her translations from Kim Hyesoon’s The Hell of That Star can be found now or soon in Asymptote, The Margins, and The Nashville Review, and her original poems in Poetry, The Yale Review, and Black Warrior Review.

Kim Hyesoon is a distinguished contemporary South Korean poet who lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Her books have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Dutch, and Swedish, and her English publications include A Drink of Red Mirror, Poor Love Machine, and Autobiography of Death, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize.