The knife has been in the back pockets of strangers. The forest, full, used a sharp leaf to cut across the summer’s face. The strangers’ teeth were black, and the sweet sugarcane dyed red the throats of the birds. The old dwarf, leaning on a railing in the forest, carved a wood mannequin. The rickshaw driver wasn’t able to stay awake through sunset. In the restaurant, a blue lizard fell onto a plate. Under the window grille, my uncle-in-law suffered from a stomach cancer for many years. Riding on a bicycle that foreign children rode, rolling down to the evening sky in the west, my uncle-in-law held a dollar bill in his hand. He pedaled toward the forest, but the flightless bird was swollen in the throat. Home is where he began to grow ill. Chewing the soup noodles glistening with fat, my uncle-in-law folded the dollar bill lengthwise. The long corridor rang as the evening, a beast’s hard tongue, descended.
Translated from Korean by Jae Kim
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