In a world where people spend much of their lives surrounded by stress, speed, and constant distraction, the spaces we live in quietly shape our emotions and thoughts. A home is more than walls and furniture; it is a reflection of personality, comfort, and inner peace. The way a space is designed can influence the human spirit just as deeply as art, music, or literature.
When people decorate their homes, they do more than arrange objects. They create atmosphere — a silent language of colors, textures, light, and memories. A carefully placed lamp, soft curtains moving with the wind, or the warmth of wooden furniture can transform an ordinary room into a place of emotional safety. Aesthetic spaces do not need luxury; they need harmony.
Interior design has become an important part of modern life because people increasingly seek beauty in everyday experiences. In many cultures, homes carry traditions and personal identity through decoration. A traditional carpet, handmade ceramics, family photographs, or natural plants can preserve both memory and individuality within a living space. Through design, homes become stories without words.
In today’s digital age, aesthetic living spaces are often shared across social media platforms, inspiring millions of people around the world. Minimalist rooms, cozy reading corners, soft lighting, and natural colors have become symbols of calmness in a noisy world. Yet true aesthetic value does not come from trends alone — it comes from authenticity and emotional connection.
Beautiful spaces also affect mental well-being. Studies often show that organized and visually peaceful environments can reduce stress and improve concentration. Sunlight, open spaces, greenery, and balanced decoration contribute to emotional comfort and creativity. In this sense, interior design is not only about appearance, but also about human psychology and lifestyle.
At the same time, aesthetic living should remain personal rather than perfect. A home becomes meaningful not when it looks expensive, but when it feels alive with warmth, memories, and individuality. The most memorable spaces are often those filled with sincerity rather than decoration alone.
Mushtariybegim Ozodbekova is a student and aspiring writer from Uzbekistan. She enjoys exploring culture, aesthetics, and human emotion through reflective writing. Her work often focuses on the connection between beauty, identity, and everyday life.
This article was inspired by the idea that living spaces quietly influence human emotions and behavior. In a rapidly changing world, creating aesthetic and peaceful homes has become a way for people to reconnect with themselves and find comfort in ordinary moments.
(Trans. by Nhat-Lang Le. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
BITTER POTION
(For Ngọc Trâm)
As fever is burning you on its pyre
I become ash too
The bitter potion cannot wait any more
Holding your hand
I pour
My grief into the empty bowl…
O’ daughter! As the mist falls
My hardship arches across the cold night
For frail flowers
To give off scent needs bitter roots.
Sweat becomes callused hands
Spring pours into the medicine bowl
My old age weeps with mute tears
While truth bursts out for no reason.
I wonder what you eat in your dreams
I put the bowl on the window
When you grow up to my age now
At the bottom of the bowl
There may still be a storm.
(Trans. by Nhat-Lang Le. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
Where the Sky Is Spacious
You blow in the warmly ardent season
Trees wither for lack of water not far from the river swollen in splendor
The fish grinds up the hook and upsets the order of time
I shrink up to fly into infinity
The tower raises multi-directional sensory organ
Your braided hair is glorious like a beaded open-air crown
and your skin resplendent as the back of the moon
sweet fruit and golden paddy resplendent as the back of the moon
the timely seeds stand up proudly
the thunder, lightning and tornado are self-confident,
but when my grandparents’ silhouettes are seen
through the perfumed vapour of cooked rice, I burst into tears
Overwhelming absorption and sudden revelation
are woven into horizon of clouds in every circular breath of hope
to trigger the drops of drizzle in the chest
and the leftover food preserved in memory
Truth makes the letters jump out and they cannot be withdrawn
we are all more self-confident when we wake up and see the symbol engulfed in the mouth of fire.
(Translated by Nguyễn Tiến Văn. Edited by Susan Blanshard)
Accompanying the Guest Out of the Alley
After brewing tea
When I returned
The guest was gone
Speaking on the phone
His family said he had been dead seven years
A misunderstanding
At home
All in turmoil
No memory of when the portrait was taken down
Where was the winding clock?
To whom was the fake ancient teapot given?
Dropping in on the neighbour
To check several food items
Some with higher prices
Some remained unchanged
In the house
The tea still hot
Pushing a cup towards the guest’s vacant place
A deadly vapour six meters high suddenly rose up
Bowing down in front once in a while.
(Translated byNguyễn Tiến Văn. Edited bySusan Blanshard)
Mothergate(*)
I
Mother nature caressing child as the moonlight
Sound passing from bough to bough, the howling
Skin and flesh of the woman I loved,
Our love child spreading deep into the dark
Entering into the dark night,
Skin and flesh erect lift the layered clouds for us
To make a watershed of rain over the sources of rivers
A bough quivers on the water’s surface
Where a bird suddenly perches
Only I can see that small bird so far away from the road
Far away from the garden, from the other flocks of birds
I quietly pass through the corona at the bottom of the water
And look up at the sky with open wings
Rising to the top of the tree where the bird’s beak
Bends down to feed into the mouths of its fledglings
Each sip of wind
Sound of chipped grain in the chest
The bare ground and green fruit
The dense-leaved canopy of the forest
Newborn child on the ground
Swim across the river the tadpole’s tail severing
Learning to flaps its wings, fanning the wind into the nest’s warm bowel
Sprouts the cotyledon leaves, flies away freely
Steam rises by the river-wharf
Space condenses the confusion of time
Smoke steams up high
I realize I am swimming in a sea mist
Not mist but rain
The tall tower glittering
Breathing, muscles firm, the leaf singing…
The dead return, suddenly, in the blossoming flower
I shudder at a shoreline
The water surface choking where there are no breaking waves
A sip of cool water drifting slowly…
Suddenly remembers the high tide season submerging the cricket’s cave
Burble sound of bubbles gushing up by stages
So that I realize where the cave mouth is…
II
Place child on the ground
The riverbed has enough pain to tear off the body of night
Nature glossy wet
The trunk of trees disintegration turns into splinters
Water swift flowing
Flowing faster
I burst into tears to sweep away the spider web
Sound of the heron’s hoarseness
The ashes flashing up
Moon trembling
Pick up a pebble to draw on the ground
A field
The young calf bewildered
A clear outline as the calf bent down to graze
Another direction draws an extra eye
The eye of wild animals or eye of human
Write the words on the remaining empty boxes.
III
The voice very close
Under the light of dawn you must transform yourself!
Fruits
Firelights
Yin Yang bowl of water
While crawling over bowl of twilight
Pull the body gradually out of the shell
I sip the dewdrops
The ghastly shell heaped up high
Was out of reach
Groups of people helping each other towards incapacity
End of dawn.
IV
The shade of trees bursting out underfoot
Images on the map are torn off?
Or the half-bat half-mouse corpse?
I was so frightened, weaving the grating
Set booby-traps around myself
Sharpening the knife
Preparing a matchbox
As close to the horizon
The drifting darkness was terrible
Faster than emotion
I keep accumulating anxiety, the resentment
Until the blackness of night was completely
Erased off.
V
I chased small prey
Threw myself upon the wave’s crest, then lost direction
The low tide
In the dream near morning
My bones painful
The tail and dorsal fin frostbitten
There is a hand threading the strings
Dragging me slowly on the ground
They stopped to shelter from the rain
Suddenly release me
Near the foot of waves
I was grateful the rain
The loud thunder and cool wind.
VI
Father recently tried to get up after being bedridden, staggering out the door, he fell into a square block of light
He tried to point his finger, then said: “That green beetle on a leaf canopy, father sees it for the first time”.
I tell these unintentional stories about the time father was in a coma. A story of the large cloud that flew slowly through our home. The deep wells rising steam up to the window. One story about the song of the crypsirina temia bird, makes everyone look at the bowl of drugs.
The body of father is like shallow rivers, dry wood, and the empty paddy grain
The raceme of weighty fruits, swaying in the strong wind
Father suddenly whispering: Please help father go to rest
Sound of dried leaves sliding off the roof makes father and I shed tears together.
VII
The universe lays the black coat over me
Only eyes open to pray
Mumbling I still thought
… white hand black blood white tongue black tears white back black helix curl of white hair black sweat
The black spilt on everything will end us
Let’s pray to save the people of this world
Lighthouse…
Kitchen bright…
Look in any direction
Like learning to focus on the blackboard
Learning to separate the colors
To spell the letters
This crossroad of white
The earth’s surface, the seas surface white
Great old man, a chair, the woman in white
The inspector, the farmer in white…
The mouth reads aloud, the mind still holds sundry thoughts
…white tongue black tears white back black helix curl of white hair…
VIII
Curled up I sleep in cold wind
Dream to be a fetus
The navel-string connects to the solar
Fly above canopy of the trees
The eyes with a look, make the sound of sobbing… blue
Every tiny bud of limbs
Springing lightly in the body of Him
I wake up
That place starts on the road
The colt unsteady standing up
The flock of insects crawling out of the trunk
The tiny shrimp blasting off the throat of water.
IX
drum gong and eight ornaments
opens the festival of imperial court
sing and dance to heaven
the great merit of four palaces
opens the mind of a disciple
tolerant eyes look
the quiet weather
the special envoy giving out grace
sincerity respectfully kowtow
four gods flanking the lady god
garb and turban of sorceress are brocade and flower embroidery.
come and go refreshed
moving between heaven and earth
powdery cheeks and ruby lips
rhythm of bamboo beating and rhythm of castanets
string of coins
sacred dragon hovering
five great mandarins’
the hand swaying
high talent deep virtue
the flame glittering
fondle protecting
loving mason bee
silkworm spits out the silk cord
garb and scarf flapping
alluvial cuddling
wind coming back to the riverbed
cassaba melon pyriform melon
fragrance of lotus and areca pervading
boys and girls entering the region
prepare the sedge mat, prepare the blanket
as flower, as butterfly
faces glowing with pleasure
as the ground is to the sky
grass and trees in good verdant
raining fast and violently
…
Translated from Vietnamese by Trần Nghi Hoàng
Edited by Frederick Turner
(*) Mothergate – Mother in this poem does not mean “mother” as normal. It carries the meaning of “the Way”, the “philosophy of belief.”. As: “The Way that can be told of is not an unvarying way; The names that can be named are not unvarying names. It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang; The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind” (Lao-tzu)
The Opening Ground
Gushing
between the screams of ephemeral belts of land
the riverbed writhes in waning light
dusk holds day tight in its mouth
fire convulses
fiercely ascending the tree tops
scorching the buds
A flight of birds spreads across the sky
so thoughts can reign on earth
where the wind’s face meets a bowed hill top
a deep cavern exhales myths to morning dew
ponds and puddles find a heavenly direction
the river gives birth while flowing
An open embrace of waves
playing in childish ebullience
the water surface turns to ruins
You set up an already broken sun
Drifting…
An unknown silence is drifting by
the lamp wick shortens
as kerosene soot says its last words
I vaguely hear the boiling batch of herb saying its apology
With closed eyes the world appears unpolluted. The surrounding pure spaces are spreading and latticed. We see ourselves in childhood holding a bright candle in the church. The candlelight is filling eye-sockets, filling the hollow immobile gaps amidst secret verdant foliage. With closed eyes the forest resembles a garden. The rattan stems, the ferns and wild grasses take the shape of huge ancient trees. The needle leaves form a large canopy. The earth bee, the porcupine, the squirrel, and the bull are similar shapes… And I stayed motionless for a long time with my eyes closed. Even though my premonition had warned me, they were looking for a clue, fanning the wind, taking fright… With closed eyes we can see people and all things in justice and in a clear light. Pens and books, beds and drawers, knives and chopping boards, and the old bike were of the same size. Each human organ opens up with multiple strange eyes, while the venoms absorbed are permanently sealed up with no way of escape. With closed eyes you are not so busy as when I am with open eyes. But your silence makes queer resounding sounds, telling me that your love has penetrated the trees, the streets and houses, the gardens, the fields, and the rivers and springs… From now on we need not doubt anything until we close our eyes forever
(Translated byNguyễn Tiến Văn. Edited bySusan Blanshard)
Photos, Fruit and Dreams
Under-exposed photos, speed-ripened fruit and dreams that lose their wings before the rain, flow slowly against the current of memories.
A wind blows open morning fields, rushes into rooms full of blended dust and light, wipes sweat off freshly bathed dreams.
The origins are within the span of a hand, when you come back you have gone through your entire life, or you wait to reincarnate into the next life.
Those souls that have yet to reincarnate, visit worshipping places, fly aimlessly, then shelter in fixed idolatry.
Someone runs across the dreams, the fruit and photos, to recover what he lost, to feel each tear choke back and see the amalgam of each shadow.
Origins have renewed space, and a generation of young grass is spreading over old ground.
Souls stand at new angles opening to different lights, and in the moan of fresh dew, they pause and knock on each vowel.
Everywhere new streams are beginning to pour into memories, taking the photos, the fruit, the dreams, to turn everything into a voice last night.
The herb doctor burned his books at the end of the garden
New medicines in stock had expired
The witches suffered punishment
Their mouths closed by iron hooks
Birth
When the bell suddenly dropped
Covering the old temple warden’s head
The fish committed suicide by jumping into a cloud
Ten thousand fishing hooks, hanging in the sky
Birth
Ink was splattered under feet and blood
Congealed in throat and lung arteries
With a stroke on the first page
Thousands of pages were permeated.
*
Fallen from the summit
With two sharp wings
Centering on the corpse
Slashing the atmosphere
Hurried winds had no time for bandages.
*
Clawing from the eye sockets
The viewpoints
With posthumous pictures as evidence
Cut out the tongue
Stretch to dry off in the sun
the slogan’s lesson
Slice off flesh piece by piece
Dismember limbs
Show the innards
The skull all set up
Was completely covered with mold
This epitaph could not be written.
*
The crow dreamed
All deaths were arranged
After the crow’s croaking
Who volunteers to lie down.
*
The crow flew into the room
A finger raised slightly
Implying:
This is the gun muzzle
The scythe
Even the spade
Even the very hard finger
Rather it was frozen
Then defrosted
Then melted down.
*
Do not approach the shade
It was the crow
Spreading its wings at sunset, sunrise
With its claws clinging to the winds
To grind dry leaves
To prune outreaching branches
The poet took refuge in the shade
Each letter hollowed out of an eye.
*
To look at
Things
Glaringly
Because in the wink of the eye
The shadow of the crow
Stormed in.
One’s own shadow
Did not raise its voice
For fear of turning into a chick.
*
A number of people emerged from the crowd, clad in black, wearing black masks. While running, they slapped their arms on their flanks. They tried to raise their heads by stretching their necks. The black shadow hovered close to the ground.
*
Perched on a tree fork after overeating and napping, the crow dreamed that every mouthful of food squeezed into its stomach would turn into an egg. The crow chicks crept in groups from the five organs and immediately lowered themselves to hunt with the instinct of a bird of prey.
*
The utmost sufferings looked back on a life almost dead. The cloak gave a muffled shout when passing desk and drawers. The telephone slept silently. The staple opened its mouth to hide its claws. The broomstick gripped the laborer’s arm, and pulled her to the garbage dump. The hat brim on the head cried out in panic, then bent down to devour the entire face of the guard. Nobody opened the gate. Yet many people managed to find an entrance.
*
The disembodied souls looked for a way back to fight the evil crows. After the volley of non-lethal bullets, smoke from incense joss-sticks spread onto a board, with the first word written for the new lesson.
*
This is the last line in a testament:
“Start the celestial burial at the appearance of the crow’s shadow”.
*
The night shadow crept into the crow’s belly.
And ours too. With gnawing pain together on the hungry river. The drops of troubled water found a way to pass through cotton fibres. The huge surface of water, its vibrations, wishing to keep hold of human shadows. Strike a match and remember that the wick is very distant. Throw up both arms, raise your voice alone in the darkness.
The crow out of sorts through the might
Craws in fright
For the first time the sound goes out without an echo.
(Translated byNguyễn Tiến Văn. Edited bySusan Blanshard)
Biography of Mai Văn Phấn
Vietnamese poet Mai Văn Phấn was born 1955. He has published 19 poetry books and 1 book “Critiques – Essays” in Vietnam. 34 poetry books and translations of his are published and released in foreign countries and on Amazon’s book distribution network. Poems of Mai Văn Phấn are translated into more than 40 languages. He has won a number of Vietnamese and international literary awards, including: The Vietnam Writers’ Association Award in 2010; The Cikada Literary Prize of Sweden in 2017; etc.
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. the 3 time Best of the Net nominee and 2 time Pushcart Prize nominee has been widely published over the years. Most recently at Yellow Mama, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review, Night Owl Narrative and Disturb the Universe Magazine. His most recent book, to live your dreams, published by Whiskey City Press, is available to purchase on Amazon.com by going here: https://a.co/d/08MEaejk
I tried to press ‘Normal’ to the mode of the conversations I had with my parents,
I wanted everything to become normal again,
I wanted to start laughing again with them,
I wanted the joy of the child to come back again,
But none of the things I did worked out.
I tried many times
Just to have my heart shattered again.
Mom was easier to manage
But Dad was the most difficult
Always bringing up the past
Always sounding so hostile
And my fragile spirit suffered.
It happened for a long period of time,
Me trying to become a good child
And them being too difficult to placate.
Then I decided to stop.
I decided to stop trying so hard to please
I decided to bar my soul from being wounded
I decided to start carving out joy for myself
I decided to look for love elsewhere
I decided to love myself,
Because for many years I had seen myself through the distorted views of my parents.
I had seen myself as someone who could never do the right things.
I had seen myself as someone who would be very unlikable.
I had seen myself as one who was very inferior.
I had seen myself as someone who was below the expectations they had for me,
So, on a good day, I decided to make peace with myself.
How did I do it?
I stopped to care about what anyone thought about me.
I stopped to crave for their love.
I distanced myself from people
I no longer jumped into conversations
I no longer laughed so hard.
I shielded my soul.
I became a bit rested,
Because I was no longer having arguments with my parents every now and then,
Arguments that left me shattered and broken.
I was no longer having the exchange of bitter words.
I no longer allowed anybody’s bitter words to penetrate me.
But very soon,
My mom discovered how quiet I had become,
How taciturn,
How separated,
So she started sermons about the broom that is stronger when it’s in the bunch
But becomes weak when it’s separated from the rest of the broomsticks.
I didn’t care.
Later her sermon changed to love.
‘If you don’t have love for your fellow human being, everything you are doing is a waste of time.’
I didn’t care.
Then one day she stopped being indirect and came directly to pose her question.
‘Why do you now keep quiet at me?
Why do hesitate before answering my questions?’
Silence.
I didn’t give an answer.
I just stared until she left the room.
What answer should I give?
They are the reason why I had become so quiet.
Isaac Dominion Aju is a Nigerian writer who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Of The Net Awards. He’s appeared on international journals, including Poetry X Hunger, Kalahari Review, and Steel Jackdaw Magazine.
Waray Literature and Kimball’s Critique of Contradictions in Eagleton’s Work
I
It was a sunny afternoon on May 6, 2026, when I made my way to the Leyte Samar Heritage Center at the University of the Philippines Tacloban. The Heritage Center is a two-story structure with smooth, bright white walls that stand out vividly against the blue sky. Its roof is covered in reddish-pink tiles or corrugated sheeting, and the main entrance features a striking gabled canopy supported by two light-colored pillars. Tall, arched windows with dark frames and louvered or grid-style panes run along the front and side walls, allowing light to filter in. Inside the building, I found Writing Literary History: Mode of Economic Production and Twentieth Century Waray Poetry by Jose Duke Bagulaya, in which he analyzes Waray literature using Terry Eagleton’s ideas.
II
According to Roger Kimball, Marxist academics such as Eagleton embody a paradox. They preach revolution and the destruction of capitalism while holding secure, privileged positions within Western universities. Even as Communist regimes collapsed worldwide, exposing Marxism’s practical and predictive failures, these scholars remained unaffected, retreating into obscure theories, jargon, and radical movements like deconstruction to maintain their stance. This shift turned humanities departments into spaces of intellectual conformity hostile to Western traditions.
Eagleton, a leading British Marxist critic at Oxford, blends influences from socialist thought, practical criticism, and Catholicism, though his work grew increasingly abstract and political over time. Moving from literary analysis to “critical theory,” he began treating literature merely as a reflection of ideology rather than studying it for its own merit. At the core of his work is the Marxist idea that economic structures determine culture – an idea he softens with complex terminology but never abandons.
Eagleton uses the term ideology flexibly. Defined neutrally as how beliefs connect to power yet always deployed negatively to describe ruling-class manipulation. He claims Marxism alone stands outside ideology to offer objective truth, allowing him to interpret all art and literature, from “The Waste Land” to works by George Eliot or Henry James, as symptoms of bourgeois crisis or false consciousness, denying individual genius or intrinsic value.
Ultimately, Eagleton views art and literature only as tools for social change, rejecting the liberal idea that art enriches human understanding or possesses its own validity. His major work The Ideology of the Aesthetic frames aesthetics through this political lens, surveying the history of ideas to argue that concepts of beauty and taste are rooted in power structures. For Kimball, Eagleton represents a critic who cares little for literature itself, using it instead to advance a rigid, utopian political vision detached from reality.
Eagleton’s The Ideology of the Aesthetic surveys major thinkers from Baumgarten to postmodernism but offers predictable coverage and flawed analysis. Though extensively researched, it fails as an introduction to aesthetic theory because Eagleton consistently interprets philosophy through a rigid Marxist lens, distorting ideas (such as Baumgarten’s focus on sensory knowledge or Schopenhauer’s metaphysical pessimism) into narratives of class conflict and oppression. His writing often becomes obscure and forced, as seen in highly abstract, psychologized readings of figures like Kant.
Central to his argument is the claim that the aesthetic is inherently contradictory: it promises freedom yet functions as a tool of ruling-class ideology, as coercive as law though experienced as voluntary. The critique rejects this framework, noting that Eagleton defines “contradictions” only against his own political model, not objective reality. Kimball concluded that the book is judged confused and unilluminating regarding art, serving primarily as an illustration of ideological reasoning rather than rigorous analysis.
Short Biography
Fhen M. was an academic writer at Cebu-Seoul Software International from 2010 to 2011, penning numerous essays, including a literary critique of Voltaire’s Candide. Notably, the novel features a pivotal encounter between its protagonist and a creole character with a maimed slave from a Suriname sugarcane mill. As a philosopher, Voltaire was a vocal critic of slavery in his writings.
Heading to the agit, wearing a muffler like a holiday
On days when the wind crumbles cold
A hunger circulates in my calves
Holding each other’s shoulders to make an aerial tunnel
Migratory birds flock to the agit that gives them flutters
A tunnel that feels like New York to some groups
Rolling the winter wind round and round, spinning along the same path
If you go up to the wide-open fourth floor, you can spin even more
On the street with migratory birds, small words whisper
A delightful clamor walks to and fro.
The black rabbit has not arrived yet, but
Hexagonal snowflakes, blowing hot breaths, ho-ho
Affectionately, Merry Christmas!
Beside the tree, rabbits in pink vests are pounding a mortar
Migratory birds driven back by the cold, walking and walking again
Cheerfully, Happy New Year!
At broad daylight when the sun rises, if fishes fly up, children clap hands
In the aquarium fountain, whales cheer
Resident birds who came out dragging their slippers walk backward
A perfect place to exercise on a holiday with a muffler wrapped around
Even if the directions we come and go are different, on a cold day,
let’s meet at Pangyo Kakao Agit
카카오 아지트 판교
연명지
휴일처럼 목도리를 두르고 아지트로 간다
바람이 차게 뭉그러지는 날이면
종아리에 시장기가 돈다
서로의 어깨를 잡고 공중 터널을 만들어
설렘을 주는 아지트로 철새들이 몰려든다
어떤 무리에게는 뉴욕 같기도 한 터널
겨울바람을 둥글게 말아 같은 길을 뱅글뱅글 돌고
뻥 뚫린 사층으로 올라가면 더 많이 돌 수 있다
철새들과의 거리에는 작은 말들이 소곤소곤
유쾌한 소란이 걸어가고, 걸어온다.
검은 토끼는 아직 도착하지 않았지만
육각형의 눈송이들 뜨거운 입김을 호호 불며
다정하게 메리 크리스마스!
트리 곁에서 분홍색 조끼를 입은 토끼들이 절구질을 한다
추위에 밀려 돌아온 철새들 걷고 또 걸으며
명랑하게 해피 뉴 이어!
해가 뜨는 한낮 물고들이 날아오르면 아이들은 박수를 보내고
수족관 속 분수에서 고래들이 환호한다
슬리퍼를 끌고 나온 텃새들은 거꾸로 걷는다
목도리를 두른 휴일에 운동하기 딱 좋은 곳
오가는 방향이 달라도 추운 날에는 판교 카카오아지트에서 만나요
The Escape of Sero
By Yeon Myung-ji
On the Serengeti plains, Mama Lulu and Papa Garo graze, Replaying in slow motion.
In the sunlit hunting grounds, Grant’s zebras are a tribe Whose paths forever overlap. To leave the herd and dwell alone— A landscape hard to fathom. Did he long to return to the wild of his roots, to graze?
Each day left behind, A relentless chain of anxiety. Where did Mama and Papa go, leaving him behind? No matter how long he waited, they never came, So, I must leap this fence and find them, he thought. And Sero broke free.
The keepers, those sisters and brothers, Are not his mother and father, after all. In the city seen for the very first time, Though he wandered this alley and that, Nowhere was a patch of grass to be found.
An adolescent who just passed into youth, Was this escape his ultimate choice? Or a clumsy rebellion? Losing consciousness to a tranquilizer gun, he returned, Only to face the collapsed fence.
Have Mama Lulu and Papa Garo finally joined as one, Deep in the wilds of Africa’s Serengeti?
세로의 가출
연명지
세렝게티 대초원에서 풀을 뜯는 루루 엄마와 가로 아빠가 느리게 재생되고 있어요
햇살 사냥터에서 그랜트 얼룩말은 겹치는 동선이 많은 종족이죠 무리를 떠나 홀로 지낸다는 것은 상상하기 어려운 풍경 고향인 야생으로 돌아가 풀을 뜯고 싶었을까요
혼자 남겨진 하루하루가 불안의 연속이지요 엄마 아빠는 그를 두고 어디로 갔을까요 아무리 기다려도 오지 않아 저 울타리를 넘어 찾으러 가야겠다고 세로는 가출을 했어요
사육사 누나와 형들은 엄마와 아빠가 아니잖아요 처음 본 도시에서 이 골목 저 골목 헤매고 다녀도 어디에도 풀밭은 없었어요
사춘기를 막 지난 청년기 가출은 그가 택한 최후의 선택일까요 어설픈 반항일까요
마취총에 정신을 잃고 돌아온 곳에는 쓰러진 울타리만 보여요
루루엄마와 가로아빠는 아프리카 세렝게티에 합사했을까요
Profile
Poet Yeon Myung-ji began her literary career in 2013 with the poetry collection 『Gashibi』, published in the Minerva Poetry Series.
Her published works include the poetry collections 『Sitting Like an Apple』 and 『Where would the House of the Sorry’ be? 』 the e-poetry collection 『Seventeen Marco Polos,』 and the travel essay 『Step by Step, Walking the Camino.』
She has received the Tolstoy Literary Award, the Homi Literary Award, the Cheongsong Gaekju Literary Award, and the Aviation Literary Award. In 2025, she was awarded the Bronze Prize in Poetry at the Literature Asia Awards.
Her poems have been translated and published in local languages in India, Pakistan, Kosovo, Italy, Egypt, the United States, and Belgium, Greece, UK, and Iraq.
