Poem by Kari Gunter-Seymour

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.

First print: Sheila-Na-Gig

Kari Gunter-Seymour’s award-winning poetry collection is titled A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2020). Her poems appear in numerous journals and publications including Verse Daily, Rattle, Main Street Rag and The LA Times. She is the founder/executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of the WOAP anthology series, Women Speak, volumes 1-6, a poetry workshop instructor, the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year and Poet Laureate of Ohio. www.karigunterseymourpoet.com

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