Anti-Elegy for Ghost Stories
By Corina Yi
The urban myth of Cheonyeo Gwishin, or the virgin ghost, goes like this: An unmarried woman who dies, often by violence or misfortune, lingers in the living world after her death, her soul heavy with unresolved resentment. This haunting is rooted in patriarchal ideas that a woman who dies before fulfilling domestic duties is considered incomplete, leaving her soul tethered between the living world and the afterlife.
These are the restless souls of women who are half-told, half-crucified, wicked femme fatales and Bloody Marys of the East, holy mystic divine, hair undone like wedding rain. She makes her non-existent lovers from blood teeth, relies on these protective measures, how phallic, this Madonna-whore complex as penis-in-mouth desire. Who came up with sucking dick anyway? This is a dick shrine for dickless girls, is what they mean to say when they bury her upside down for marrying a tree instead of a man. The tree was promising; the storm gave it a good gust. She is immortalized by man, eclipsed as allegory. This is no typical axe murder; there’s something more sinister at play, like children picking up their pieces to leave for good, a husband who comes home late and tends to his penis. Ghosts make graves haywire and open-source for the barely living. Make this myth anything but believable—sing good daughter, good mother, good wife, and I apologize for refusing to call to something I stopped believing in.
Opening Cutscene to a Horror Film
By Corina Yi
There is no cold open kill. At the elbow of the playground I see
her peeking into the dead of night, girlish apparition of
bad season, curling her fingers around a pair of swingset chains
humming, watching from below, pearl-eyed and breathing
closer and closer like a silent spill. I ask what haunts her, and this
is her response: cyborg; cudgel; vertigo; sailboat; rope; mousepad;
tenderness; man. This is my first mistake, to wonder and offer solace
that doesn’t exist. I imagine she wants me, so I watch my shadow
purple around her from the distance between rot and glory
and I ask to be tamed. I was born to strip and wilt, kneel down
at someone else’s expense for their pity. I surprise myself when
I find that I’m not up there watching through my window, but skinny
dipping with her in a fountain, negotiating something human
of her artifice. She is wet moon and red meat. We swim and simmer
to the surface. I ask about the bruises on her ribs on accident
and she debones the story, spares me a switchblade smile. She tells
a lie and confesses there is no story, just murders and exiles
about virgins and widows who dislocate their grief. I ask what
she dreams of and she says to stun someone’s death and make it
her own, trace the lineage of her hurt. So I sit there knee to knee with
her until I find a reason to flee the scene, a bite that bursts my knee
open like a flute, but it doesn’t happen. Fireflies emerge from her
breasts and light the sky. I ask what she wants most and she responds: tea;
pirate; peacock; couch; breakfast; swansong; birth; conquest.
Author Bio: Corina Yi is a writer and student based in Southern California. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Agave Review, the Claremont Colleges’ literary magazine.