I’m watching the cat watch the bird through the glass.
She’s cackling and chirping. The cat, I mean.
Interspecies trash-talking like you wouldn’t believe.
What kind of bird is this, I wonder. A black
and white something or other. Chickadee? Finch?
Nuthatch? Warbler? Yesterday, I googled ‘Where
do gnats go when they’re not flying?’ A new low.
Whether this finch is oblivious to Nony or doing an
impression of a finch oblivious to Nony isn’t clear.
Either way, my girl is here for it. As if all the ho-hum
moments of her life are redeemed by this one. I wish
I could focus like this. Who am I kidding? I wish I
could feel desire like this. Licking my lips, biding
my time, my tail betraying the inferno inside —
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, The Summerset Review, Great River Review, TriQuarterly, Anacapa Review, Slipstream Press, The Lincoln Review, Arc Poetry, Pinch, The American Poetry Journal, North American Review, The Indianapolis Review, ONE ART, and The Missouri Review. The Lincoln Review nominated her poem “Things to do on a Fulbright fellowship in Japan” for Best of the Net in 2025. Terrain.org nominated her poem “Mastodon” for the Best New Poets anthology in 2024. The Missouri Review featured her poem “Amsterdam” as a “Poem of the Week” in January 2025.
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