CARESSING A SICK TIGER
-translated by Jack Saebyok Jung
A tiger I could never have touched if it had not gotten sick.
A power, soft in its orange hue, lies on an iron-framed mattress, pierced with an intravenous line.
I tickle it with a foxtail to cheer it up. I tickle it with a bird feather. I tickle it with a handful of
hair. Where did this foxtail come from? Did you pull this feather from a waterfowl, or did you
pick it up from the ground somewhere? Something that cannot be known—is this hair yours?
Look, it is certain that you have not been cruel to anyone. Someone is tickling me, as if to check
if I am ticklish or if the anesthesia is working. They are touching my armpits and my thighs. I am
constantly ticklish until my heart is hurting. I keep saying it is ticklish, and I am tickled, but I
can’t shake off the inside of the thick fur cloth. I sweat a little and go near the tiger with an
intravenous line sticking out of it. I look at it, and when I reach out to it with my hand, the tiger
suddenly stands up and bites off my hand. My hand might just get swallowed and go inside the
tiger’s stomach to tickle it. Then the tickled tiger will spin and spin out of his sickbed, strike at
the surgical instruments shining silver with its tail, and break the glass of the window that is
shining coldly. Even then, saying that it is tickled and being indeed tickled, it will spin and spin
on its own. The tiger’s eyes are closed, and wondrously, it does not smell like how I expect a
tiger to smell. Instead, it smells thickly of chloroform. The tiger’s thick and heavy-looking four
feet are neatly lying on their sides. Nearer and nearer, I am touching the sickly tiger as it is. O
doctor, is it really okay for me to caress the tiger? I didn’t know that the orange was a fruit that
could blind these shining eyes. I don’t think I will really become a tiger if I touched it. I really
hope not. What shall I call a sickly tiger? Shall I call it a leather pouch or a pouch of bones?
Shall I call this tiger lying down wearing an oxygen mask an “oxygen mask tiger”? Is the tiger
supposed to be so hot? Is a sickly tiger supposed to be so hot? I am not sick; I am healthy. But
when it is hot, that is hell, isn’t it? My heart is the hell that I have grown from afar, and hell is the
heart that I have been dying in the sunny plot. But how far must a far place be for it to be far?
Switch,
Spoons hitting each other,
The sound is like the washing of dishes at daybreak,
The opposite,
The knees of a friend waiting for the immigration interview while standing in the corner of
produce section in that vast land,
In a country where my friend wishes to live, oranges apparently blossom in each house, and the
winters are like fall. From time to time, I caressed my friend’s cheeks like I was sweeping them,
and every night shadows would rise from them, making my friend look like a different person.
They told me that it was so sad to see the oranges rot at the share house.
At a faraway place,
What I do with the fingers that I caressed my friend with
Is that I got to keep this up for hundreds of years till I turn into a skeleton, isn’t that right? Eating
and sleeping and cleaning out the fridge. I need to think about the health of the caretaker who is
doing all that. There aren’t that many audiences. I brought an orange I bought. I hope a tiger will
come out while I am peeling. I hope it doesn’t hurt. I hope I won’t be able to touch it. I am sure it
will come back to life, but still, even when it is dead, please call me.
Kim Bok Hui / 김복희 is a South Korean poet who made her literary debut in 2015, when her poem “Vanguard of the Blank Page” (백지의 척후병) was selected for the New Year’s Literary Contest hosted by the Hankook Ilbo. She is the author of the poetry collections I, the New Human I Love (내가 사랑하는 나의 새 인간), Hope Loves (희망은 사랑한다), Sweet Porosity (스미기에 좋지) and Helper Spirit (보조 영혼), the poems from which was awarded the 69th Hyundai Literary Award in 2024. In addition to poetry, Kim has published essay collections including Singing Bokhui (노래하는 복희) and You Say You Want to Write Poetry? (시를 쓰고 싶으시다고요). She lives and writes in South Korea.
Jack Saebyok Jung is a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow and the author of Hocus Pocus Bogus Locus (Black Square Editions, 2025). A Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he co-translated Yi Sang: Selected Works (Wave Books, 2020), winner of the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work. His next book of translation, Kim Hyesoon’s Lady No, is published by Ecco. He teaches at Davidson College.