[Afternoon Poem] Mealtime / Oh Young-mi

Family members must always eat together, Dad smiled as he forced me to sit at the table.

“Dad, I’m not hungry at all,” I was about to say, but the cork stopper blocking my throat popped with a bang, spilling out black, smooth hair.

The woman, whose hair was stiffly ironed as soon as I was born, pried open my throat. Along with the sentence, “You must treat Dad well!” she stuffed the black, thick hair into my throat and sealed it tightly with the cork stopper.

“Alright, I’ll eat diligently!” I shouted. Dad, with a satisfied expression like a bear in spring, firmly placed a spoon and chopsticks in my hand and said, “Mixed grain rice and seasoned squid are good for you. Chew them well.”

When I said I was going to Seoul, Dad looked at me like a rattlesnake shedding its skin. “If you go to Seoul, your throat will become tattered, you know?”

Dad’s voice gradually changed into the woman’s voice, and the sentence “You must treat Dad well!” began to stab at my throat.

I felt as if poison was about to spread throughout my body. “Alright, I won’t go!” I shouted loudly. “That’s my daughter,” Dad returned to being a worn-out fairy tale book.

■ This poem is not gentle. Far from gentle, it seems quite angry. This poem is neither pretty nor beautiful. Rather, it bluntly utters what it wants to say. This poem never offers comfort nor warmth. Instead, it sneers, exposes, and shouts. That is why this poem feels somehow awkward and uncomfortable as a poem. But why do we always think poems must be soft, beautiful, and warm? Just as we still recklessly assume that women, that daughters, must naturally be so. ? Poet Chaesangwoo

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.