Twinning

• RACHAEL IKINS

My dad’s extra kidney, 
his father’s twin brother, Carter, 
only one who made it out whole. 
Was it schizo-effective or was mine a shadow haint? 
I ask myself often, had I felt occupied? That feeling I did 
not have a word for, anxiety. If I died, so would she. 
She almost killed me, 7th grade Hong Kong flu 25 lbs. lost, fevered weeks. 
Didn’t she care? Twin B.

Dad licked irresistibly cherry medicated spoon, blisterful mouth.
Hitchhiker twin B coughed up my first month, penicillin rashed roses.
No one ever died of love though you can love someone dying in plain sight.

Classmate’s aquarium, a crawfish mother squirming translucence, 
100 minuscule babies on her back, third grade. Our crawdads’ 
gray enamel wash-tub, beneath flats we uprooted in shallows, set free after supper.
Fish breakfast summers, side bowl of blackberries, chocolate chip Christmases, 
extra thin. Opa loved food I caught, gathered, cooked for him/I loved to feed him. 
Large mouth bass, dad cut a poem, clutch of caviar, I write fascinated sadness.

Striped perch, eye beneath surface red, glowing gold, evening’s rim, 
blackened. I had to pee, father’s hands caught me, I stood up, spilled us into the drink. 
Sunset’s sweat-painted bass jumped onto the boat. 

Lake gazed at rituals without expression. 
My parents slouched, cigarettes, Scotches, Adirondack chairs 
on the beach at camp. Woods calligraphy I can’t translate, 
message in old whiskey bottles line the dock    divers disappear to decipher
 wall-boarded, lake-hoarded secrets.

Scrawling in black and white
white on gray, stories unspool smoke, 
    waves, 
       doe tracks, 
stories clawing divots of darkness as bobcat stalks.

What is the story on purpose or accidental? 
Pen and ink runs ahead on pebbled snow. 
A cell stops dividing. Flicks of birds scribble other histories, 
outfly bullets, hundred-year-old poplar swipes paw, 
stops a missile midflight. After twenty seven years, 
surgeon’s scalpel births my twin, she glistens, 
breathless 
in a metal bowl 
like a rainbow trout

Rachael Ikin's newest collection, The Woman with Three Elbows is now available: Message her 
- Instagram @rzikins.author.artist;
- or on FaceBook: Rachael Ikins Poetry and Books for a signed copy with bookmark. 

Rachael Ikins is a 2016/18 Pushcart, 2013/18 CNY Book Award, 2018 Independent Book Award winner, & 2019 Vinnie Ream & Faulkner poetry finalist.  2021 Best of the Net nominee. She is a Syracuse University graduate with a degree in Child and Family Studies. She worked as a vet tech and later as a sign language interpreter/teaching assistant with ages K-12. Author/illustrator of nine books in multiple genres. Her writing and artwork have appeared in journals world wide from India, UK, Japan, Canada and US. Born in the Finger Lakes she lives by a river with her dogs, cats, salt water fish, a garden that feeds her through winter and riotous houseplants with a room of their own. Frogs found their way to her fountain. Dragons fly by.