Part 1
Pomegranate / Sand / Beauty / Fluff / Forecast / Bench / Basic / Toad and I / Fox / May / Zoo / Extra / Same / Handshake / Me / Relay Stream

Part 2
Nine years old / Transfer / Platform / TV / Model / Continued

Part 3
Like a dog / Rent / Scratch the side / Kevin Carter / Did you feel murderous? / Why / White / Express / First rice cooker / Bruise / Instead / At the same time / Back / Bag / Tragedy / That's why / Bokseongru / Etiquette / Boiler room / Touch / Next stone / Not really

Part 4
The most southern / Roommate / Song of the day / Red

Hellish stars, in the world surrounding me
The me left behind and another me

Those who have left this place
They say the Earth is a beautiful planet
I have only lived here
I want to prove that hell is here

I leave you here
Get out there again
―The “beauty” section

If you open the window, you can see me standing inside the window and counting the windows.
The glass is shining brightly.
If I turn off the light, both the me standing outside the window and the me standing inside the window can disappear.
―The "Pomegranate" section

For the speaker of this collection, this world is far from beautiful.
To others it is a “beautiful star,” but to me it is just “hell.”
In a world full of all kinds of models/fakes, where “there is no giraffe in a giraffe,” “there is no earth in an earth,” and “there is no person in a person,” I, too, am placed in the world as a “model that looks like a person,” a person who is not yet a person.


In this reality, the speaker recognizes the world that constitutes 'me' by separating himself from himself in the world.
That is, it is a process of identifying the gap between myself and the world around me and objectifying it to understand my situation in the world.
To do this, Im Sol-ah uses several words such as “window,” “frame,” “photo,” and “TV.”
The actions of the poetic speaker, such as the 'me' inside the window looking at the 'me' outside the window, hanging the sea in a frame, and watching the "me sinking into the sea," reproduce the world I belong to, and by positioning another 'me' outside of it, allow me to observe myself within a set frame.
Poetry using these few devices calmly separates me (me as a model) from the world rife with conflict and violence, and me observing it.
By “leaving me here” and “I/get out there again,” the poem clearly observes the roughness of society, but fills it with indifferent expressions.


“I thought I was dead
It's disappearing
“I think I’ll live.”

I often hear that I seem like a good person.

[… … ]

My good intentions are just repeating the same thing.
It is said repeatedly as if it were a forecast filled with future tense.


Goodwill is well-dressed, willing to worry, willing to warn.
He confines me with a smile.

Open the window.
I push the strange weather and good people inside out the window.

The weather is nice today.
―「Forecast」 section

Look at those rats, some look like carp and some look like little rats.
The more I follow people, the more I become a liar.

[… … ]

Only after sinking to the bottom did the body reappear.
It is said to float on the water.
I got wet with the chairs and finally walked away.

―The "Junggyecheon" section

Im Sol-ah's process of recognizing the world and understanding and acknowledging the conflict between the world and herself is followed by action.
“I”, who only repeated stories that could be easily predicted like a weather forecast, “I”, who “often heard that I seemed like a good person,” was trapped in a window, and now, by opening that window, “the strange weather and good people” that had been trapped inside (inside the speaker) are pushed out of the window.
People call me a good person, but when I open the window and look in, I see myself passively repeating the same words, and in the end, by pushing out the me that is not me (along with the good people), I can become me.
By not compromising with the world's favorable evaluation, I become myself.

This kind of active behavior of the speaker appears several times in different ways in the poetry collection, but is ultimately collected into one story.
I put toothpaste on my stained white T-shirt to remove the stain ("Basic"), and I, who have "sunk in the sea" and become corroded ("Beauty"), want to "become a circus performer who shows the impossible," and "swim against my breath like a mouse following a carp," and "finally" ("Junggyecheon") walk.
The speaker's appearance, moving forward from recognizing the absurdity of the world, makes us imagine a certain will to continue to change this hellish world with very small movements.
Especially when read together with the poet Im Sol-a's own strong voice on the back cover of the poetry collection, which states, "I am against all discrimination and violence based on gender, age, body, status, nationality, and race," we can confirm the clear message being sent by the speaker within the poetry collection and the poet outside the poetry collection.
Even if an individual's actions cannot change everything, this collection of poems shows the beginning of the process of resolving the wrinkles within me and deciding how to live in this world.


Poet's words

I just knew my sister was the key.
I didn't know you could share room keys.

In my room, terrible fights are entangled
I barely managed to make a beat.

My sister said.
This world is like an unsolvable code,
That kind of thing isn't even worth the graffiti.

How right that is.

People who live between my sister and me
It would be nice to share the keys.

March 2017
Sol-a