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GUEST LITERATURE – KOREA 2 The full moon has risen, come out of the basket. The body naked like the full moon. Under the moon, the moon greeting flower, the evening primroses have bloomed. And if you pick the moon greeting flowers and put them in a basket, the inside of the basket will be a hell for eighty-four thousand. Shake your bronze bells and cross the thresholds of water. The spirits of the girls await you. Decapitate the flowers. In one flower throw your papa and the flower shadow. In one flower throw your mama. Offer them as food for the dead. Those children will chew them and swallow and they will see the road for ghosts. . . . where they dragged us was the comfort station behind the Koror Hospital . . . and this is a story about long ago (a story about a very old today, it is). Each room had a name and number pasted onto it and in Parao also my name was Maiko. Maiko the dancer. With clothes ripped off. Thrown into a narrow room. And it was: Dance, Maiko, deeper than death. And I was fourteen . . . . . . one two three four five six . . . from mouth and nose and from down there, till the blood came exploding from every hole in my body . . . Dance, Maiko. Paralysed all over I saw the Yellow Spring otherworld, I did. The dark sky tearing black and the Yellow Spring water falling . . . 156 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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KIM SUN-WOO If you cross the river it’s the ghost road . . . Ancestors mine ancestors mine dead and gone ancestors mine grab my umbilical cord and hold on to it please. I touched the Yellow Springs and held on to the side of life. 3 The ghosts in the stones, they rise out of the stone tied to rock. Look, moonlight shakes the ghost pole, and when the girls with their wild hair swim to us on white silk milkrope clang, clang, clang, the sound of rock breaking, look, they come cross the Western heavens between the gap of earth and sky on a tightrope over hell look they shake their torches they cry and limp they come . . . The young girls fell to the officers, Father! Father! When the old officers would throng the door of my room, Father! I shouted, I did, and then sometimes there’d be one who’d buckle his belt back on and turn and I’d walk the black knife’s edge of sleep and when I’d wake like a roof raked by lightning, my feet would hurt . . . . . . Go ask your mum to do that! Oh Mother, I am sorry. The day a soldier wanted me to do something so unspeakably vile, I couldn’t hold back and screamed and fought back. My teeth broke and I got bruised all over and everywhere I was bruised. I had knots like poisonous snakes in tangled thorn grass and my body was ninety thousand leagues of hell . . . and some who saw this hell settled for just fondling my breasts and leaving . . . . . . . There was a lieutenant by the name of Yamamoto whose mother was a Joseon woman and he spoke good Korean and sang a good “Arirang” . . . Yamamoto brought me a fork and I sharpened it. I meant to BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 157

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GUEST LITERATURE – KOREA

2

The full moon has risen, come out of the basket. The body naked like the full moon. Under the moon, the moon greeting flower, the evening primroses have bloomed. And if you pick the moon greeting flowers and put them in a basket, the inside of the basket will be a hell for eighty-four thousand. Shake your bronze bells and cross the thresholds of water. The spirits of the girls await you. Decapitate the flowers. In one flower throw your papa and the flower shadow. In one flower throw your mama. Offer them as food for the dead. Those children will chew them and swallow and they will see the road for ghosts.

. . . where they dragged us was the comfort station behind the Koror Hospital . . . and this is a story about long ago (a story about a very old today, it is).

Each room had a name and number pasted onto it and in

Parao also my name was Maiko. Maiko the dancer. With clothes ripped off. Thrown into a narrow room. And it was: Dance, Maiko, deeper than death. And I was fourteen . . .

. . . one two three four five six . . . from mouth and nose and from down there, till the blood came exploding from every hole in my body . . . Dance, Maiko. Paralysed all over I saw the Yellow Spring otherworld, I did. The dark sky tearing black and the Yellow Spring water falling . . .

156 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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