“We peered into the shadow” by Robin Rosen Chang (poetry, ’18)

An excerpt from “We peered into the shadow” by Robin Rosen Chang (poetry, ’18), published at The Summerset Review:

We peered into the shadow

on the balcony, behind a plant
so desiccated it closed into itself,
three misshapen squabs in a squalid nest.
Wayward tufts of yellow feathers poked out
of their pink bodies. Beautiful, my aunt said.
I thought how un-picturesque, how unlike
pigeons you might find in a painting.
Picasso’s pigeons, for instance, on his terrace,
overlooking an untroubled sea, two bright white ones,
a few others, whimsically plump, roosting,
and a pair on a rail. But, in these
unseemly squabs, only a beginning before
they and the mother would separate,
the young moving on, the mother living
only a few more years before she’d die. […continue reading here]