I don’t want to read
another self-help handbook,
or listen to another
high-minded podcast.
I want gauzy dappled light, the best
legends to be true, to drink wine
on my porch and believe in a celestial atua,
glowing, winged, conjuring a breeze
to ease what pales me.
My wishes are cast in fear as much
as passion. Case in point: the way I clung
to the delusion that she would not do,
what she straight up did.
I’ve become a dark-eyed junco, flown headfirst
into a plate-glass window, flung
in no uncertain terms against hard ground,
gravel prickling my spine.
From my perch of paralyzation, I watch fruit flies
rise from a heap of rotting compost, flit and flap
through their ridiculously short lives
as if lost, as if like me, the idiots thought
at some point there would at least be dirges.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 28, Issue 1.
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio, the curator/host of the online series Spoken & Heard, the Executive Director of the Women of Appalachia Project, and the editor of its anthology series Women Speak. She is the author of three award-winning collections of poetry; her most recent, Dirt Songs (EastOver Press) is the winner of the 2025 IPPY Bronze Award and the 2025 Feathered Quill Award. Her work has been featured in the American Book Review, Poem-a-Day, World Literature Today, and The New York Times.
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