Kari Gunter-Seymour

Until I Go Yonder

Let the Queen Anne’s lace
and milkweed grow​​
lithe along the hedgerow,
tag the green rising hillsides,
every blossom a fragment of prayer,
pygmy petals softly flossed, tossed windward 
like pin feathers of wood thrush, 

a few molting under my bare feet
as I climb. Mind the roots, 
rocks and creek beds who 
can never keep still at their song
and fixed stars, transparent in the tryst of day,
full vigor come dusk.

My past is painted in coal, struggles 
of endurance, sanctity of the covenants,
laundry hung to dry, feeding time 
according to the rhythm of the blood.
All of it familiar to me as my own bones.

My withered face no longer blooms 
velvet like a lamb’s ear. 
I can’t stop making lists, as if 
penciled predilections might somehow​
explain what it means to be from here,  
the sweet grass shorn close every year 
to preserve the clover.

Until the Curly Dock and Buffalo Grass​​​ Cover Her in Green 

These days my words lack enchantment. 
Still, I sing my sister’s name like a spell
cast into the cool mouth of winter,
listen as a bitey wind tongues its return. 

A cruel trick, as if to imply 
I cannot recognize 
a mockery of my own making.

Eventually they all tremor back—
words I should never have spoken,
set to stone by my own feckless hand.

I pretend to be well-reasoned, a calm 
flicker of light—not a shock of frantic flame  
aquiver inside a bottle, hurled 
against infinity, an explosion of tragic vernacular.

For Thine is the Kingdom, yadda, yadda. 
I cannot stop thinking of her body, cold, alone, 
yielding to this rich Appalachian soil,
the sky a menace of tones.

Back to Issue XI…