LTI Korea 
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SIWF 
Two Poems by Shin Yi-in scrap
by Shin Yi-in
Translated by Jack Saebyok Jung
March 4, 2026
Author Bio 작가 소개
Shin Yi-in
Prosperity of the House of Fireplace
My surname is Fireplace. When I introduce myself that way, I sound like someone who enjoys boasting . . . but it is plainly true, and because I know it’s nothing to boast about, I’m writing it down anyway.
“Fire is warm, and a little unsatisfying, and if you sit facing it for long enough it makes things grimy . . . yet unmistakably, it gives.”
My parents kept feeding it log after log so I would never learn what it is to go without, trying to protect the fireplace they had built, their fireplace, theirs alone. But when it came to the questions the child not yet born would fling at a name they hadn’t chosen for themself,
they had no way to answer.
“Fire hurts, it stings, it’s terrifying . . . unmistakably, it kills everything.”
Stubborn Mr. Ashheap was my first lover. Anyone who tried to correct Ashheap’s way of understanding, said Ashheap, along with Ashheap’s family, in one voice, could not truly love Ashheap. But because they were Ashheap, they couldn’t help it: they wanted me.
Rude fireplace, ill-omened fireplace, filthy fireplace, stupid fireplace, a fireplace that won’t die, a fireplace that won’t go to ruin.
Crushing pale fingers,
scribbling in places no one can see.
After that I began to love ferociously. I took anyone into my body, without discrimination. Among them were hard young ones that stayed a long time, like brass bowls, like diamonds, but in the end I melted them away, or drove them out, or turned them into ash. And that left me with a bleak, unlucky feeling, as though it might mean I wanted Ashheap. Rude fireplace, ill-omened fireplace. Once you make ash, the same words come back. And somehow the flames always sink, one way or another. So, after all, is fire simply that kind of thing?
I’m a fireplace, and yet I don’t hurt, I don’t sting, I’m not frightening. I’ve never died because of fire. I can’t even move away from fire.
On days when I blazed up, when I burned high, I sincerely wanted to crumble down and lie there. I wanted to live a little less. I wanted to remain as tiny, free particles. I wanted to become graffiti. But I didn’t want to become a dirty wall that gets graffitied on. I wanted to feel pain, to learn fear, to curse, cleanly, fully, to my heart’s content, to want what I want, and in wanting, to grow lighter . . .
My surname is Fireplace. When I introduced myself, they said, “See? You’re a fireplace too, aren’t you? You can’t help being a fireplace.” The fireplaces gathered, laughing, as if they could see straight through me. They were the sort obsessed only with the great hole at their center, a hole you can throw anything into, a hole you can look straight through. They were the sort who try to hide a hole by pressing it to another hole, scheming a splendid life in which holes don’t look like holes at all.
I made a family with a fireplace and lived out the rest of my days, warm, and a little unsatisfied, turning no one into ash; standing, wall facing wall, in a life where no one could ever step inside anyone else.
The Dream Machine
The fault began with me.
That day I pulled out a large, secret-shaped hammer, one I’d wanted to try
for a long time, and brought it down on the machine with a crash. It was a machine
that had run for ages, solidly, smoothly.
The person who had been running it with me started in shock and fled. He
went to my friends and impressed on them that I was hiding a big hammer,
that I might not be in my right mind.
When the machine heard that news, it grew sad. Kids, I’m fine. Get along.
If you start fighting and stop handling me, I’ll become nothing but a useless
heap of scrap, unable to make anything at all. Turning the worst possibilities
over and over, it slowly began to rust from the inside.
We couldn’t tell what was best to do. To sell it, or to repair it before the
machine got any worse; who ought to pay, who ought to be responsible, who
ought to be compensated, and whether, once all that was done, our relationship
would improve.
We were decent people, people with shame. We felt guilty for breaking the
machine, and yet in our hearts we didn’t want to believe we were the cause, so
we shut our mouths and didn’t speak of it again.
Later I met a few shameless people, and then—then I learned: you’re supposed
to grind your teeth and insist, It’s because of you. It’s your fault, and
make the other person pay the price. If you do that, does it become as if nothing
happened? As if, once you’re the only one smiling, everything can return
to the way it was? As if you could try running the machine again . . . ? I was filled
with remorse, but
We had too much shame. We couldn’t let go of apology or embarrassment.
We couldn’t even lay it on each other, so no one’s hands were free.
Both of us, exactly alike, had pawned both hands to shame. In the end no
one could hold the other, could pat them and say it’s okay, could joke, could
slap, could even speak—watching the other’s face, hesitating. And the machine,
from a certain day on, was left untouched, out of reach.
Then one day, when I was free again, I remembered that time. Alone, I hovered,
unsure, and opened the machine’s lid. Today, staring into it,
I write here:
It’s because of me.
It’s my fault.
The old, broken machine remains as it is.
Quietly, I set both hands upon it
and think
of what it was, exactly, and how heavy, the thing those hands held for so long.
Translator 번역가 소개
Jack Saebyok Jung
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, will be published by Ecco in 2026. He teaches at Davidson College.
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