Untelling

WHAT CHOICE DO I HAVE ANYWAY?

Kari Gunter-Seymour

Such a tired question
or slack-spined answer,
wind whipping the parched grass
into a thrash of dried-up voices,
a leap of grasshoppers
mocking the cracked ground.

As hot as it is, we may be
in the coolest summer
of the rest of our lives,
a fate that lands jackbooted,
a kick to the face,
two black eyes all at once,
greed and ignorance a plague
on every belly.

I pretend the money from my taxes
mends pot-holed roads
and bridges, try not to think
about the weight of corporate waste,
stress-eat another jelly doughnut
because why not?

Everywhere I stand is a graveyard
of strangled roots, a dying pine
shedding its hypodermics in the background.
Once all that was green is gone,
who will we be?

Time is the only thing that passes.
Gather up what small magics you can.
There are few places to hide.

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio. Her current poetry collections include Dirt Songs (EastOver Press 2024) winner of the POTY Author of the Year Award and Storytrade Award, Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner of the Legacy Book Award and Best Book Award (Poetry). She is the executive director and editor of the Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak anthology series. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily, World Literature Today, American Book Review, The New York Times and Poem-a-Day.

ISSUE 2 | WINTER 2024

Cover photography by Sarah Josephine Pennington