Laurie Kuntz
Laurie Kuntz is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and two-time Best of the Net Nominee. In 2024, she won a Pushcart Prize. She published six books of poetry. Her latest That Infinite Roar, published by Gyroscope Press. Her themes come from working with Southeast Asian refugees, living as an expatriate in Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Brazil, and raising a husband and son.
It Won’t Affect Us
When we sold democracy
for cheaper Pop Tarts,
many shrugged, saying:
It won’t make a difference,
we’ll continue as always.
Dirty dishes will pile, sills get dusted,
lawns mowed and houses painted.
The rains will come and go,
trees decorated for Christmas,
snow shoveled, and come June,
a neighbor’s rose bush will shock us with bloom.
A calico cat will purr its owner awake
to get fed, and life will go on,
but somehow, each day coming,
we will feel the quotidian shift
a blaring headline will break us,
and affect our souls
so much so, that we hope
that rescued calico cat will claw
against the screen door
until we open it, again
and stare out at the distance
between acceptance and action.
Leaving
for Michelle
We invent our own ways of leaving.
It is morning in Manila,
we begin to dress, survey
our bodies as friends can.
Our lives are revealed in scars we have acquired.
The accident slashed across the side of your forehead is fading, can be covered by a light
foundation.
Stretched under the flap of my stomach
is a red seam, barely a year old,
We confirm what is left of our beauty
after the years have marked us
with sons and skids down icy roads.
A short distance away my husband reads a child’s fable to my son.
Across an ocean there is a man
you contemplate a beginning with.
We invent our own ways to say goodbye.
I lean toward tears.
You hold them back with a sturdy voice
coming from the other room where you apply something red to your lips.
You emerge dressed for L.A.
and tell me:
Life is a constant choice between the
wonderful and the wonderful.
I force a smile.
the kiss you imprint on my cheek
is red–a fresh scar.
