Two Poems from Kim Sono’s Syncopation

“What pronouns would a nonbinary bird use?” I asked South Korean poet Kim Sono this while translating their third poetry collection, Syncopation (2024), a book full of unnamable beings. Identities are especially slippery in these two prose poems: a bird is alive and dead at the same time, and a mysterious ungendered angel appears out of thin air. The poet and I decided that both the bird and angel should take “it” pronouns in English, since it’s not just their genders but their species, too, that remain ambiguous. But what are the politics of introducing anglophone neopronouns into poems originally written in a language (Korean) far less sensitive to gender? What does it mean to name something—or someone—whose existence resists naming? Kim Sono turns naming the unnamable into a game: the poems in Syncopation form a sequence where the ending of one poem supplies the beginning of the next. It’s like a game of throw and catch. In these two poems, the line “We each went back home” summons the line “Come back,” just as death mimics life, sunset mimics sunrise, and birds mimic angels. Indeed, Sono reveals every boundary as an aesthetic choice, as well as a site of aesthetic play.

-Eunice Lee

The boundary as an aesthetic choice 

Bird was a good person. When I came out, it showed me its dead body. I understood. The problem of being a boy or girl or neither didn’t seem as serious as the problem of being both dead and alive.

It was less like having both a dead body and a living body than losing both, as I understood it. Just like I was losing out on both the female and the male. Bird was troubled by the fact that both its life and its death were leaking between its wings. I could claim my existence by using the word “nonbinary” (despite its being a mere negation of the word “binary”), or by asking to be referred to by “they” pronouns, but what do you even call that state of being alive and dead at once?

Bird was neither ghost nor zombie, just a bird carrying around its own dead body. Where did Bird keep it? Neglected, the body would rot and give off a terrible odor, others would easily find out, and the cops would arrest Bird. Nor could Bird throw the body out. But what is a bird supposed to tell a cop? “Killing a bird is not considered a crime in this country. Is this a violation of the Animal Protection Act? But what about all the people who eat chicken? Also, this dead body happens to be me.”

If it weren’t a city bird, Bird could have claimed an uninhabited island for itself and laid out some five hundred of its own dead bodies. Dead bird bodies drying out under the sun . . . Bird would have flown across the beach to make sure all the bodies were drying well . . . Occasionally plugging an eyeball back into its socket . . .

Just like I’d gone to a women’s studies professor, Bird had gone to a linguist.

“Your name in English is Bird, and the Korean word for it is pronounced sae, or say, so you could choose between the two spellings, but do keep in mind that in French this is sé.”

There was Tamil, there was Hebrew, there was Bengali, and so on, but Bird was fine with learning just two foreign languages. Learning more languages meant understanding more words on trips abroad, but this also meant Bird would no longer be able to shut words out of its ears, even in a different part of the world. Bird was satisfied translating most foreign words at the blah blah blah level.

Bird felt nonbinary between life and death. Every boundary is a kind of silence, said Bird, wearing a good-fellow smile.

I didn’t ask, Where did you get that dead body?

It was less like losing both than letting go of both, as I understood it. This was my aesthetic choice. Bird gave me a pat on the shoulder. I gave Bird a pat on the wing. We each went back home.

A weak unsettled life

Come back. I lay on the sunbed. Come back, come back. I tossed and turned. The swimming pool lay unfolded. I could see it while lying down and while sitting up. I didn’t know when I’d fallen asleep. Or when I’d woken up. But the swimming pool felt real. It was softly stirring its clouds. Come back. What? I turned my head towards the voice. There was an angel. An angel sitting in lotus pose with one eye closed. It wasn’t my partner. Nor was it anyone in my friend group. Come back, said the voice that technically should have been the angel’s, ringing through the forest. The forest? I’d booked a resort for a hundred and twenty dollars a night. When I remembered this, the forest turned into a cheap resort. I heard construction noises. You want me to cut down this five-hundred-year-old tree? Someone’s baffled cry. Come back, the drill said to me. Or rather, the words “Come back” sounded like a drill. The angel with one eye closed did not have a mouth. The angel with one eye closed charged forward, diving into the water. The skinny angel soared midair, wearing a bright blue bikini. Come back, come back . . . Ripping the cloud’s reflection on the water, the angel vanished. The resort stood where a five-hundred-year-old tree was cut down and if I’d known this, I wouldn’t have booked it. Would’ve gone for a walk in the woods instead. Would’ve walked and walked and walked. The angel with one eye closed peeked out of the water. I looked at its open eye and beckoned with my finger. Come back, babe.

The angel with one eye closed walked out of the water. Water dripped from its wings as it returned to our holiday. The forest must have had a horizon. The sun must have hung on it. That red hue lengthening left and right could have been sunrise or sunset. The closed eye of the angel must have held a pupil, which someone must have called the sun. The angel lay with me as I watched the side of its face turn red, watched another sun set and rise in the droplets of water on its skin. The angel still had one eye closed. What is life without this? Our laughter stirred the trees. Or rather, the stir of the trees was our laughter. I watched a leaf fall slowly from the tree to the angel’s face, looked at the leaf-turned-lip, then threw up.