dear one
if you should come for her when i’m not there, be kind,
look her in the eye and smile as you smooth back her hair,
rest your palm on one hollowed-out cheek, then the other,
tell her she’ll see otis again, and he’ll be spry instead of sick,
that joe will be there, too, baking up bread and macaroons,
that the shy baby goldfish will poke his head out from the
plants in the pond and nibble food from her fingertips as
before, that the garden will thrum with flowers humming
—impatiens, begonias, marigolds, geraniums, petunias—all
jostling for her attention, while the morning glories climb
the back door frame like kids on a jungle gym who don’t
want to go home yet. tell her i know: we are just stumbling
through, injured and injuring, making a holy mess of things,
and it’s unspeakably fine anyhow, isn’t it, all of this?
Claire Jean Kim is on the faculty at University of California, Irvine, where she teaches classes on racial justice and human-animal studies. She is the author of three award-winning scholarly books. She began writing poetry in 2021, and her poems have been published in or are forthcoming in Rising Phoenix Review, Terrain.org, Tiger Moth Review, Anthropocene, Bracken, The Ilanot Review, Ghost City Review, TriQuarterly, Anacapa Review, The Lincoln Review, Arc Poetry, The American Poetry Journal, and The Missouri Review. Terrain.org nominated her poem “Mastodon” for the Best New Poets anthology in 2024, and The Missouri Review featured her poem “Amsterdam” as a “Poem of the Week” in January 2025.
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