Ghost School

Photography by Mohammad Ali Mirzaei

I work at a ghost school
In this neighbourhood if you’ve been a ghost for over ten years you automatically become an
institutional ghost
I teach a class to the newly enrolled ghosts
(It’s really impossible to disappear because of this work)
First, I have them carry a book on their heads and practice walking without touching the
ground
No one listens to what I say and there is no place to stand or lie down
I make them practice so they won’t be shocked even if they leave no footprints on the
snowfield
I make them practice falling asleep floating in air
I teach them such things as how to overcome melancholy inside a coffin
how not to spew out hot air in the basement morgue
how not to turn into mummies even when a desert drags them away
I don’t know myself, but I just say whatever comes out of my mouth
how to use a telescope or microscope made in the Time factory
how to have an out-of-body experience
how not to despair even when they become forgotten souls or when echoes don’t return
how to wish that they could set something ablaze
how to rage into you as bright as the fireworks lingering in the night sky
can be found in the textbook, but I’m not writing it
how to sob hiding inside a song
how to hold their breath hiding inside the sobbing
how to flow with the flowing people then spur themselves up to the sky sobbing like a tree
how to erase my body’s margins and become an adjective
as the sounds from a brass instrument navigate like planes taking off
and therefore how each day becomes fainter
are all in the magic that has been passed down
then I add
a ghost that takes revenge is low rank
a ghost that only appears in a night of sleet is middle rank
a rotten ghost luring a swarm of flies is high rank
a ghost that is like a cloud, a question, gas is high-high rank
and high-high-high rank, etcetera, which nobody knows about
All right then, shall we practice raging like spring snow
as if pulling out the left wing first from the body where swarms of flies have died?
Then I issue a warning to the ghosts who haven’t done their homework
Damn! You can only become institutional ghosts after graduating from a ghost school

~ Kim Hyesoon, trans. from Korean by Don Mee Choi

Kim Hyesoon (1955 – present) is unafraid of writing about the grotesque and true. She is interested in the potential and suppression of the woman’s body, and challenges the idea that it is ugly to write poetry that mentions blood, menstruation, intestines, and birth. Or rather, she challenges the idea that ugliness is unfit for poetry. She also questions in her writing what it means to be a woman writer and to exist as a poet amidst cruel societal realities. 

Don Mee Choi is the author of ‘Hardly War’ (Wave Books, 2016) and ‘The Morning News Is Exciting’ (Action Books, 2010), and a translator of contemporary Korean women poets. Her most recent translation is Kim Hyesoon’s ‘Poor Love Machine’ (Action Books, 2016).

This translation of ‘Ghost School’ originally appeared in ‘Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream’ (Action Books, 2014). The editors wish to thank Action Books for generously granting permission to republish the translation here.