The Telling of Tales, Anti-Manifesto

The Telling of Tales

I.

Barren hilltop, sly wisp of smoke,
spiraling curve of jack pines
curling up from dry beds of needles.

The age of folklore has passed.
Boorish tiger and trickster rabbit
no longer share their long-stemmed pipes
in the high-up misty hilltops of Korea.

Nor do they recline, full-bellied and lazy
among wild ginseng and Rose of Sharon.

Even the great, gentle she-bear
has lost her patience with lying about in caves,
has parted with this business of turning human.

II.

Every schoolchild learns the story of
Shim Chung, the blind man's daughter
who leaps from the bow of a fishing boat;
her schoolgirl body, a sacrifice
to the dragon god beneath the sea.

Bags of rice the sailors exchange for her
offered as a bribe to the temple
to restore her father's sight.

Her devotion so impresses the dragon king
that he returns her, releases her
from her grave of seaweed,
slimy grave of ocean floor,
delivers her back to life atop a lotus flower;
fishermen in the harbor stunned into silence.

Years later, as a queen,
she calls out to her father at a banquet,
his eyes still sealed shut.

III.

The story outlives the woman,
lives her life for her,
takes away the necessity of her life.

Jung-shin-dae alsoleft home,
were carried across the sea
as virgin offerings.

Those who could return
found the eyes of
their fathers stuck closed,
though the men wailed
with wide open mouths
about their losses.

Shame, shame on the dragons
that would drown the nation.

Their daughters left for dead,
pristine still from the moment
their slender feet crossed
the threshold of the courtyard gate.

IV.

After all, what sense can there be
in recalling the morbid details:

curtained stalls,
narrow wooden platforms,
kitchen girls scurrying,

officers with drawn swords,
snaking lines of impatient soldiers,
virgin skin cracking like under-ripe fruit.

What use in tracking their return
if there are no lotus flowers,
if there are only the courtyard gates
locked against their return,

and the maddening defeat
of U.S. camptowns
and welcoming GIs.

Shim Chung was a poor girl, too.

Purity survives
only in narrative.

V.

In his own folktale,
Park Chung Hee called camp women
personal ambassadors,
welcoming U.S. forces with open legs,
smoothing the path of diplomacy.

In urban legends, the story ends
with their disappearance:
young country girls waylaid
in bus stations, train stations,
abducted and sold to brothels.
Gone in an instant.

Wholly unrelated to the
women who shout
and scream for justice,
railing outside the gates
of the U.S. base.

VI.

How will tellers of folktale
spin the story of Yun Ku-mi,
the young prostitute
murdered by an American soldier?

Will she be made a
sacrificial daughter,
another body crushed
into the mortar of a fragile nation?

Like Shim Chung pacing along
the side of the boat,
choosing and unchoosing
the trajectory of her fall.

Like Queen Min waking
to Japanese soldiers
creeping like shadows
into her chambers,

or the women of March 1^st,
parading defiantly down
the streets of Seoul,
voices opening wide
against the bayonets.

Why are all our heroes martyrs,
speechless in death
while the living
struggle against silence?

The details of Yun Ku-mi's death
preempt her life.

She will become legend,
will survive in stories,
still bruised and bloodied,
still split wide by Coca-Cola bottle,
still left for dead on her bedroom floor.

Her body covered in the
sweetly-scented white dust
of laundry detergent,
her mouth closed.

VII.

Yun Ku-mi resides now among the stars,
sits around a celestial table

with Shim Chung
who drips seawater on the ondol

with the mother swallowed by a tiger,
whose children light the day and the night

with the former jung-shin-dae,
who still remember what it was to be a girl

with the thousand virgins...