Alice Lin’s Family Reunion

by C.M. Clark

They swing in tandem, in winter
the metal ashes ache. One mother, one other

pushes, pushes,
push. Baby

steps, baby steps, four paws
tread. Switchback stairs to kitty-corner bed. One

white bird among birds among
birds rewriting white, circumferencing

the currents. Not uncertain
the homing birds. Collar bone coils over steering wheel.

She hunts
by scent the slant back, the left-handed turns, the one blighted tree

serrating the continent’s shelf. Adrift. Reluctant
Alice Lin’s teacup feet gone now

as west as feet can go before running
out of breath out of

vertical ground beneath. A swallow
of Oolong, leaf left on tongue tip,

lanterns lure blind moths with rice-paper light,
confidential breath on cheek before dinner. Paper kiss

the twin cousins, womb zones intact. The high-
waisted low one, the myopic, the macular. How

their hair greyed before the brisk fruit ripened, how
one born first, alpha dog marries dog who kicks recalcitrant stone,

buries her birthright’s barely chewed
bone.

C.M. Clark‘s poetry has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Paddock Review, Ovenbird, Metonym Literary Journal, The Lindenwood Review, Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, the South Florida Poetry Journal, and Gulf Stream magazine. Her work will also be featured in Demeter Press’s forthcoming anthology, Travellin’ Mama. Clark was runner-up for the Slate Roof Press Chapbook Contest and Elyse Wolf Prize, and a finalist for the Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series. She also served as inaugural Poet in Residence at the Deering Estate Artists Village in Miami. Author of full-length works Charles Deering Forecasts the Weather & Other Poems (Solution Hole Press, 2012) and Dragonfly (Solution Hole Press, 2016)), Clark’s most recent collection, The Five Snouts, was published by Finishing Line Press (2017).

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