not a letter to my father
kremlin was your nickname at work
because of the secrets you kept.
well, they didn’t know the half of it.
the down-low trips to beijing and pyongyang,
the rolls of c-notes you handed mom:
we’ll be rich one day. your husband is going
to be famous. by day, a professor in d.c.
by night, a man of international mystery,
an asian james bond, with the obligatory côterie
of female hangers-on. but it all came
to naught, didn’t it? the machinations
and assignations? except the wreckage; that part
was real. then, poetically, infirmity,
with your second ex-wife and third daughter
guarding your carcass out of spite,
as if anyone, anywhere would want a bite.
yesterday, i looked you up online
and saw you had died.
*
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, The Lincoln Review, Arc Poetry, Pinch, The American Poetry Journal, North American Review, The Indianapolis Review, and The Missouri Review. The Lincoln Review nominated her poem “Things to do on a Fullbright 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.
Wow!