Sand Woman.

Kim Hye-Sun

 A woman was lifted from the sand. She was perfectly intact, not
even a split hair.
 When he left they say she didn't eat or sleep. She didn't die
although she kept her eyes shut kept her breath held.
People came and took her. They stripped her and placed her in saltwater
spread her legs cut her hair and opened up her chest.
They say he died in battle so she ran far away from home holding her
breath. She wouldn't let it out into the world and wouldn't
open her eyes though knives flew in and out of her.
They sewed her up, laid her in a glass casket. The man she was waiting
for never came, though fingers came at her from all directions.
Each day I looked down and watched the buried woman lifted from the
sand, her two hands dumped on paper. I wanted to take a camel and go far
away.
The woman followed me in every dream and her shut eyes would open in a
flash. Under her eyelids it was deeper, wider than the desert's
night sky. 

Translations from the Korean By Vanessa Falco & Kim Sunghyun

Kim Hyesoon, a prominent contemporary poet from Korea, has published ten collections of poetry. Her poetry in translation includes Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers (2008), All the Garbage of the World, Unite! (2011), and Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrowcream (2014).

Vanessa Falco is a poet and translator of Korean poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry International, Smartish Pace, and Enizagam, and she was awarded a Norman Mailer Poetry Fellowship.

Kim Sunghyun is a South Korean poet and professor. His Korean poetry books include Metropolis, Metropolis 2, and Metropolis 3.