Susan E. Gunter: Author, Watercolor Artist, Editor
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Riding Amtrak, Cary N.C. to Alexandria VA
 
 
my eyes scan the wayside like vultures waiting to pick the bones of the dead
seeing the cruelty of trees leaning into one another because
                                                            some of us bear weight and some of us are the weight
other trees standing upright muzzle-loading rifles
or sentinels keeping the watch over ruined dreams
 
that pigment should make such a difference when it’s poured over skin
 
passing TW’s Antique Mall one erect black man standing at an angle to
                                    an old white man leaning on a cane     no eye contact
we’re in Selma but it’s not Alabama    and the church always the church
 
or it’s the Wilson railway station where a pack of six young men idles at its side
                                                            one in an orange hoodie all in ear buds
no full employment here in Wilson    while at Warren Wilson other unemployeds write
 poems about these six they will never read    because they can’t   can’t read that is
and oh my god this country’s rotten to the core   
 
we’re sharecropping the world    bingo you lose    it’s the lottery of life
this is no utopia buddy just the Great Dismal Swamp where watersnakes
spawn and no birds sing    and oh gentle jesus that junkyard of cars stretches out to the
                                                                                                            crack of doom
 
Hail Mary   mother of god    be with us now and at the hour of our death
 
This poem appeared in Paterson Literary Review​, 2020

​
Counterpoint for Ella

“I didn’t mean a word I said.”
    No, not a word, 
for language is only 
a closed system of phonemes,
    except when Ella oscillates 
between G and E, 
words cross-pollinate.

“If I hurt you, I’m sorry.”
    Your lies are like the thorns 
on the yellow bush roses 
you dug at the mine,
    as you leave me alone 
with asps and black widows.

“I didn’t mean to lose my head.”
    This word or that, 
sharp keys or flat, 
Ink Spots or spotty ink--
    we’ve been yoked 
in a slow dance 
for all these years.

Ella says “I’m sorry, while I say “Let’s split.”
Language has logical structures,
but that’s not poetry or love.
    Poetry is when the early sun slides 
in slats across the bed,
    and love is when, 
after her golden song ends, 
you hold my hand 
and our eyes remember 
that last resolving chord.



​Stitching a Mourning Garment
                        --for Carl Evar Ropp, 1931-1932
 
She chose from the fabrics in her bureau,
bolts of chenille furred like caterpillars,
gold-figured brocades, woolen baizes,
watered silks as soft as birds’ wings.
 
She measured the yards hand to nose
pinked the bombazine’s edges—no time
to finish her seams—matched notches
on the breast, wound her bobbin in black.
 
The edges of her mind unraveled
her foot pumping the treadle harder, faster
needle flashing in and out of the cloth
her thoughts pulsing in her head.
 
In the crib by her bed—still, silent
no gasping cry or shallow breath
no small form shivering, convulsing--
only a lily, his raiment bathed in light.
 
 
This poem appeared in Emrys journal in Spring 2020

​
        Apple Time

A dividing line sunders before from after,
a before-the-apple-time from a time
that no one wants to come.  But come it must.
And after apple time, resignation,
picking up the broken earthen shards,
the pottery strewn in fragments
along a burning orchard floor,
 piecing them in the only possible fashion,
praying that the pot will hold
against the days to come and come again,
each morning a cantus firmus
singing anger to despair.

Ever after I cannot remember
one single before-the-apple day,
one single green day
when I loved beyond tree fruit
my shining garden Eden.


​
Stewards of the Dead
 
I watch them circle above me, wings
like open pages curving slightly
from the spine, a kettle of royalty
attended by a page, a lone hawk
hoping for scraps from their carrion,
a bit of flesh or shredded muscle.
 
A wake of them undertakes to clean
the world of waste, their wings caressing
leaf molds as they feast on the fallen,
leaving a heap of knackered bones,
odd tufts of fur for the devil’s cloak.
 
In Brazilian myth, vultures’ wings
blocked the light, until the hero captured
their king. Man and bird compromised:
divide the world in two, sun and moon
 
Gods of darkness, death, and terror, take pity.
Spare me another hour, a jeweled sunrise--
keep me from the tower of darkness,
for I have not yet finished with words.
 
This poem appeared in Atlanta Review in 2016


​
​Setting an Intention for My Practice II

Think about setting an intention
for your practice, my equable yoga
instructor announces. But intention
implies a control that I lack. I’m
a rudderless craft moving with the
wind’s whim, a sere grape leaf
gravity pulls downward, nothing
more. So I go inward, searching 
for tangible signs of purpose,
billboards marked “This Way,”
or maybe, “It’s All for Sale.”

I don’t have a twitter account,
or I’d look to see what tectonic
shifts are moving the general
population. In general, I have 
no idea of where I am going.
I suppose I know where I’ve been,
otherwise why such memories,
the silver tintypes, those golden 
multitudinous sands.

There’s space in my practice, even
on this narrow orange flowered mat,
me taking control of me. That’s
my best hope, that I can grab
the wheel of my fate and turn it
toward an eternity of water colored
tomorrows. But the way is perilous,
the obstacles impossible to imagine,
the mountain stark, the seas blood hot.

At the End of a Long Drought
 
I wander hours through mind dust,
 dim connections, flashes of recognition,
 mother tugging at a corner
 of what I remember about pain.
 
 Then at once she's gone,
 and I settle into a pulsing hum
 of what to say today.
 Is one word better than another
 for what I must convey?
 
 Only the cicadas know, and
 behind their steady song
 lies spreading stillness,
 where I might at last find water.

​Low Sun Angle

The hours weight the winter light down,
dried daisy stalks sashaying in the wind.
I’m flattened by my own history,
trying to compost a past I can’t revive.

Today my memories nag at me,
that empyrean of years, felonies
of mind like so many bees mining
the purple starred rosemary blooms.

My tongue licks word for the honey
of remembered tunes, for the nectar
of winter afterthoughts, those blue
candles I can’t quite snuff.

Old age is like that: thoughts like
spider webs, trailing into space.