Even if there were a lot of kisaeng in Jinju

It is said that we had none in our

family.

Though they say the Jinju kisaeng under

the skirts of Mt. Jilisan have the longest kisaeng history in this country

Our family may have had many chaste

women, but never a kisaeng.

Saying that we were nobles and scholars

with no peasant, slave, or merchant origins, Father recites the family tree.

In the afternoon when we were watching

the Jinjukyobang shaman dance in the front yard of Chukseokru

I met eyes with a women performing a

sword dance wearing socks. She had both her hands covered with the traditional

cloth.

It’s odd that there wasn’t a single

kisaeng among our family ancestry.

That there is no governmental slave aunt

who plucked a gayakeum with a floating heart when the moon rose by the window

And that there is no grandmother who

killed herself because she didn’t like attending to drinking parties

And that there was no slave girl mother

that was beautiful

And that there was no uncle to cross

rivers to sell colorful silk

And that there was no peasant

grandfather who pulled out his sword because of contempt and scorn

Is so disappointing.

That there was an ancestor who saved the

country every time we faced an insurrection, but there was not a single

daughter who was sold off to be a kisaeng is really depressing.

Where did the kisaeng in my mind come from?

Tonight by the river, wanting to serve

inspiration

What should I do with this decadence?

For just a single line of a poem, decadence would sell my soul.

Which star is that gene stuck to? My

adult entertainment, sword dancing every night.

I am no different than a physical whore

strapped to the indenturement of a private loan.

I am a kisaeng. I am not a girl sold off

for her sick mother. I am a voluntarily obscene and debauched emotional whore.

With the feeling of doing it when I wake up from sleep, I puke and drink and

with the feeling of doing it again, as I shake my ruffled hair, with the

feeling of the party saving the life of the mood, in a mess, I write something.

Again I walk the south side of the Jinju

river. It is the night of the Yu-deung festival. On the riverside, at the night

market, drunk people talk to you. Multi-national flags painted on paper lamps

float above the river. As they fall down they get tangled in the wreckage

below. Amongst the filthy breath of people who spill out, the country market

lights are the light of the life at night.

Disheveled, I pull out my pen. Sleepily.

Biting the pen, not knowing that the ink brimming from the lips is spreading, I

sit by the riverside and write something, sniffing my nose. I am tied to the

couple of lines of poetry I wrote. I am a madwoman that finally believes she is

bound to poetry.

The devil pulls down his pants in front

of my eyes.

I’ll give you a line if you give me a

suck.

Even if he is the devil, I feel like I

will suck and suck and suck and suck and suck.

I sleep and wake and walk outside

without desperation, without shame

Biting a big pen, I suck until poetry

cum.

I am an emotion slut, when I introduce

myself as a poet I feel like it is a confession of my whoredom. There was no

one who sold themselves among my ancestors. My dad said, there was never bad

blood in our family like you.

Stroking the pen, I delicately shook.

Right now I feel like I have become an

old filthy whore on a moon night when the country festival is booming. I am

dancing, a sword in each of my hands.