Poetry
These Truths—Self-Evident
By Kari Gunter-Seymour
My son’s wife’s aunt, who
worked the line at Dupont for 20 years
can’t breathe without O2 through
a plastic tube because of C8, but hey,
America needed its non-stick fry pans.
Corporate peddled that poison for decades
paying Peter to silence Paul, careless
of the plague inflicted upon our valleys—
the spina bifida, muscular dystrophy, the myriad
of deformities and developmental delays,
land laved, water impotable,
livestock falling dead in the pastures.
It was 55 degrees on my drive home today,
remnants of a rainstorm threatening the horizon,
mounds of snow along the highway
refusing to melt. Clouds of steam rippled
above the sludge, as if thumbing
a wet nose at the weatherman,
who keeps preaching the gospel
of global warming to the hearless.
I rest my cheek against the cool poplar
of my kitchen table, its rugged grain
whispering ancient vowels like a buzz of bees
huddling a dying hive—we the people
no longer able to predict which doors
will slam in whose faces, the ribbon
of rot running deep. An emptiness cauterizes
the moon. The dirt is coming for us all.
The Eucharist of the Ordinary
By Kari Gunter-Seymour
I cup cool water with achy palms
along the shallows of Monday Creek,
use it to sooth swollen knuckles,
perch on a rise of moss-crusted slope.
A scurry of chipmunks scuddle
a puddle nearby, making quick work
of the afternoon. I sigh. Middle age
has made me invisible.
My golden-brown rescue hound
licks my fingers, noses his head
onto my lap, looks up at me
like I’m a movie star
with his one all-seeing eye,
the other taken by glaucoma.
He wags his tail in an ornery
remember-when-I-was-a-puppy
thump—memory
a murky topic for us both.
It’s a roll of the dice
which of us will be first
to make an effort to rise,
the breeze hinting at winter.
Kari Gunter-Seymour
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the immediate past Poet Laureate of Ohio and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship recipient. Her poetry collections include Dirt Songs (EastOver Press, 2024) winner of the 2025 Bronze IPPY Award for Poetry, 2025 NYC Big Book Award, 2025 Feathered Quill Award, 2025 National Federation of Press Women Award, 2024 POTY Author of the Year Award and STORYTRADE Award; Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner of the 2024 Legacy Award, the 2023 Best Book Award, and finalist for the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award; and A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila Na Gig Editions, 2020), winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award. A ninth generation Appalachian, she is the executive director of the Women of Appalachia