The Nest in Winter

Kimiko Hahn

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.

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Nancy Bareis

Kimiko Hahn is author of nine books, including VolatileThe Unbearable HeartThe 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
Andrew Heisel

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 J. D. McClatchy, himself a prize-winning poet, 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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