Kari Gunter-Seymour
Three times a Pushcart nominee, Kari Gunter-Seymour’s work can be found in many fine journals, anthologies and publications – Rattle, Still, CALYX, Main Street Rag, The American Journal of Poetry and The LA Times– as well as on her website: http://www.karigunterseymourpoet.com. Her latest chapbook Serving (Crisis Chronicles Press) was released in 2018. She is the founder/executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project, (www.womenofappalachia.com), a recently retired Instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and Poet Laureate for Athens, OH.
LEFTOVERS
We do well. We feel safe.
We will not live life off-target.
Let us bow our heads,
thankful for the fine-grained crust,
the yielding inner crumb.
The wine oaky, sweetened with song
trilled on angel food tongues,
we grow swollen as low-hanging fruit.
Out on the street, fallen
while no one was looking,
the nameless siphon sustenance
from their bones, hunched, rootless,
left to sizzle in the skillet,
so many futures fricasseed.
Out on the street children spin
despair’s fouled honey.
All our à la mode speeches,
our but for the grace quotes cannot
atone for the bounty uneaten,
tossed into dumpsters at end of day,
our legislators pickling the batter.
Out on the street a fairy godmother,
hell-bent for butter.
Unlike the fables–
cold porridge, toxic apples,
parents left with a sickly
succotash of choice–
she salvages second-day cuisine
via cherry red hatchback.
Hustles to rewrite stories,
one underpass,
one home delivery,
one meal-sized
biodegradable container
at a time.
Sheila-Na-Gig Inc. 