In the Father’s shadowy hoardpillows belch feathers acrossmattress and floors:what was an oriental rug, nowa carpet of scat, gone-astray socks,calendars from rescue sheltersangling for checks.There’s nothing to tossamong the vivid tethers toMother. Maybe my mother, maybe Father’s.There’s no margarine containerany less pathetic thana netsuke from Kyoto;no expired sardine tin less urgentthan a dozen aerograms; noreceipt less intimatethan their honeymoon photosnapped in the local aquarium.The adult daughter takes inthe spew,pabulum that a bird feeds its nestling.
The Nest in Winter
Kimiko Hahn
Feature Date
- July 10, 2020
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Copyright © 2020 by Kimiko Hahn
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Photo:
Nancy Bareis
Nancy Bareis
Kimiko Hahn is author of nine books, including Volatile, The Unbearable Heart, The Artist’s Daughter, The Narrow Road to the Interior, Toxic Flora, and Brain Fever. She is a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York and the president of the board at the Poetry Society of America.
Vol. 107
New Haven, Connecticut
Yale University
Editor
Meghan O'Rourke
Managing Editor
Will Frazier
Since 1911, The Yale Review has been publishing new works by the most distinguished contemporary writers—from Virginia Woolf to Vladimir Nabokov, from Robert Frost to Eudora Welty. The journal’s pages have, for almost a century, been filled with the most exhilarating and astute writing of our times. Under the editorship of Meghan O'Rourke, a best-selling poet and memoirist, The Yale Review presents up-and-coming writers, explores the broader movements in American thought, science, and culture, and reviews the best new books in a variety of fields.
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