[Afternoon Poem] Banjiha / Lee Gwanmuk

How old could he have been, just over twenty? A boy sleeps curled up like a shrimp on the cold floor of a semi-basement single room. A few days ago, his grandmother was taken to the hospital, and today he carefully washed and hung the clothes she used to wear. How did the overturned sneaker in front of the coal stove know that all the roads were suspended in the air? A world where the underground's silent response deepens the questions from above ground. Half of the time is day, and the other half is always carried along. Today, too, he took that half and went far to the breakwater, sitting there for a long time before coming back.

■ Living in a semi-basement means seeing about half of half of half of the ground above, and not seeing the sky at all. Because you can't see the sky, you can't see birds or the tops of trees either. Living in a semi-basement means that when it rains, muddy water splashes on the window, and when it snows, you get buried under the snow. And in spring, when the landlady lines up flowerpots in front of the window and some of the flowers bloom, you have to smell the scent of fertilizer, not flowers. That's what it means. Living in a semi-basement means having to smell someone's abruptly stopping urine odor and hear someone's persistent curses and futile soliloquies. As if dead. Living half, or rather half again and half again, underground is not a ritual burial nor a live burial, but simply dying and living as if you never existed in this world from the start. ? Poet Cha Sang-woo

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