i.

 

one day, when the
yearning grew beyond
the bounds of
restriction, when the
eyes tired of the foam
and the waves, and
the heart could no
longer bear the
muscular echoes of
its own pangs, house
sprouted legs, sinews
of green thread, feet
like galoshes unfurling
along the seams, the
steady motion of one
step blurred behind
the other, and house
took a long walk,
treading on air and
water, all the way
back to Seoul
from New York.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ii.

 

house is wedged,
past self in the slip

 

between the two parts
of a future self. past

 

self is a hanok made
from salvaged timbers,

 

has a curved tiled
roof, an open wooden

 

floor heated from
beneath, characters

 

in traditional Chinese
carved and emblazoned

 

at the frontispiece,
future self an apartment

 

in a brownstone, with
a three-storey walk-up,

 

sat between other
units, a fire escape for

 

a lonely evening, where
threads of every colour

 

spilled from door,
window, and roof,

 

this façade, so precarious,
so porous, where house

 

crash landed into
houseself after descending

 

with a parachute, into
the island, from the

 

peninsula, amongst the
boroughs, where house

 

believed that house past
and house future

 

could be one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

iii

 

he coats house
in mulberry paper,
dampening so that every
crevice, plane, and
tile, every lock,
every outline of brick
and ballast, every wooden
groove could be covered.
clutching a slab
of graphite, he made
sure to keep his breaths
measured, even, steady
lungs for a steady hand,
his palms blackening
as he began to rub every
corner of house, this hanok,
every portable trace, the roughness
of house’s wooden
exterior, every decorative
feature, intricate
and ornate, every piece of
carved calligraphy, every
phoenix and dragon, every
door and every step, and when

 

            he finished, he left the paper
to absorb the wind, moisture,
and soil, and when he removed
from house the mulberry
shell and placed it on a moveable
aluminium frame he noted the
ways that time, motion, skin,
had created a facsimile of house
that was breathable and mutable,
that resisted both stagnation
and foreclosure, that had
evolved in the musculature
of new labour, that he could bring
with him across space and across time
and to every new relationship that
could display house rendered
so lovingly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

iv.

 

today, house belongs
to another city.

 

his assistants visited
the house that was once

 

a theatre. this house was familiar

 

with the scent of bodies, piled
high on stretchers, bodies

 

with cracked skulls, bloodied shirts,
torn torsos, bodies that endured
the swing of batons and the whistle
of bullets, the ways that absence

 

could stretch, minute, to hour,
to day, to week, to month, to
year, the ways parents

 

learned a primal scream.

 

house faced a curfew.

 

house was under blockade.

 

house was obscured by a
media blackout.

 

the convoys surrounded house.

 

the splatters surrounded house.

 

his assistants could not bear
to look at house.

 

his assistants came to house
with blindfolds and graphite
slabs. to rub was to love, he
instructed. and so they came

 

to register every wound, every
scar, every cry and scream of

 

the students who once acted,
produced, made props, expressed

 

their anguish against the tyranny
that flavoured the air.

 

his assistants
brought paper, pressed
it against house’s innards

 

their hands following
the corners, angles, their hands
blackened by the continuous
movement of graphite, their
bodies taking in

 

all that the walls had heard,
all that the walls had suppressed,

 

all the cries and screams that
for decades had been obscured,
the suits and the speakers

 

turning away
from the mounting piles of corpses

 

of the young, the house
of conscience, the house

 

that buried the nation.

 

house contains memories.
house is political by its
existence, just like its city.

 

house remembers
what the officials will
not. house grates against
the grain. house remembers
the scent and the fizzle
of a muzzle.

 

when the assistants left
house, their hands bore
up the mulberry paper,
rubbed like raw skin,

 

and they carried it
like a carcass. house
was not hung on

 

an aluminium frame.
house is laid flat,
like a floorplan,

 

for to have house
slung, approximating
life, would be,
to house,
a mockery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

v.

 

house past, house
present, house future
are a single nest, every
feature of each
documented carefully,
spaces, rooms, each
phasing and fading, blurring
into the other, transformed
into fabric, his fingers expressing
traditional sewing, a foldable
architecture, fabric of
green, and pink, blue and
yellow, purple, turquoise,
then orange, these rooms in
which he once slept, ate, and
dreamed, in which he drew
and painted and coated every
fixture in paper and rubbed it
once over with graphite so that
the mind would forget but
the fingers never would, this
impossible home, this fabulation
of textile, this translucency
and delicacy, polyester breathing
like a summer shirt, the porosity
now that house belongs to Seoul,
to New York, to London, to
Berlin, to the new visitors who
walk through the dreamscape
corridor, who activate the
passageway of aspiration and
air, and once they come to the end
of house, through house’s final
door they turn to see that house,
in multicoloured splendour
will collapse like a ghost,
rainbow sheet folded until
house is called upon once
again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

vi.

 

house is compressed,
not stretched.

 

house defies all logic
of space. house lives

 

in speculation. house’s
interior tells a story.

 

house is permeable,
light, and soft.

 

house is translucent
and pale. house contains

 

every doorknob, every
plug, and every switch.

 

looking up you see house’s
vents, shutters, and air-

 

conditioners. these fixtures
of house, they are

 

red, yellow,
orange, pink,

 

green, purple
and blue. house is

 

for every season. house
transcends latitude

 

and hemisphere. house
survives in light and

 

by power. house keeps
warm and cools

 

down. house opens
and closes. house is

 

hospitable to
every lover, stranger,

 

and friend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

vii.

 

today, house is
two tunics, cut
to the frames of two
girls, both covered
in pockets and pouches.
each is its own room,
translucent to the eye,
each containing something
precious:

 

a crayon, a bracelet,
a pencil, a brush.
a stegosaurus,
a hair tie, a crystal,
a gem. a mantis,
a spinner, a button,
a bowling pin, and a
black and white photo

 

of home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

viii.

 

house awakens to the Arctic sun.

 

house is surprised to be on a bridge.

 

house is equidistant between Seoul, New York, and London. 

 

house used to be on the North Pacific Ocean.

 

house is bathed in absent and present light.

 

house sees the sun loop downward toward the horizon.

 

house grows familiar with the twilight of white, green, and red.

 

house sees the cold diminish year by year at an alarming rate.

 

house sees the ice forming as a flexible skin.

 

house grows familiar with the herds of whales.

 

house imagines their filtration of plankton and krill.

 

house hears that this is where house could be made perfect.

 

house now demands an inflatable suit for the cold.

 

house now requires an assortment of farms that float.

 

house could hold a diner that would only ever feed one.

 

house is the axis of three lines on a map.

 

house would require an accordion of visas.

 

house is nearest to the Chukchi Plateau.

 

no one will ever live remotely close to house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ix.

 

“Really, what happened is that the concept of home only started to exist for me when I left Korea.”

 

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