Korean Short Stories
An Heonmi Telegraph Lies 거짓말을 타전하다 Translated by Min Eungyeong
Information This work was previously published in New Writing from Korea . Please contact the LTI Korea Library. library@klti.or.kr
Telegraph Lies A girls' commercial high school graduate, I lived in the hills of Ahyeon-dong with insects and their long long feelers, an orphan though not an orphan, worked as a clerk for monthly rent, monthly supplies of rice, for that I sold my youth, my flower-like youth, who says I was sad?
I would meet my friends in college and stutter but it was not
poverty keeping me from school, an orphan though not an orphan, I would stutter too when the insects with their long feelers crawled out from the bikini-thin closet, ooh-ohoh, on Sundays I would eat a bowl of sausage in the Ahyeon market, no one asked why I always came alone, and I ate in grateful silence, an orphan though not an orphan. A girls' commercial high school graduate, I worked in a tall tall building, spent my flower-like youth realizing it was not I who was tall, but who says I was bitter? In the unlit room the insects with their long long feelers prospered, scurrying away into sightless spaces, not unlike myself, my family though not my family, my eyes blinking as I lit the coal and thought of dying seventies-style in the invisible haze of coal fumes rising, but the insects' feelers kept tap, tap, tapping my brow, ooh-oh-oh, my family though not my family, my flower-like youth tasted of insects, in an old Ahyeon bookstore I met the man who woke up one day as an insect, stroke of luck that comes once in a lifetime, and now I am true family with the insects with the long long feelers, ooh-oh-oh, see how I tap out my telegraph lies, tap, tap, my lies of a poem! Copyright 2008 Literature Translation Institute of Korea
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