The Glacier
Issue Two
Winter 2023

I’ve stuffed what’s left of you

into a desperate space between 
breastbone and rib, a cloistered fissure, 
where I horde you 
like our mother’s knickknacks, 
stashed three deep inside 
that spit-polished corner cupboard. 

There too, our childhoods: 
rust-colored strips of Super 8 film,
your lost look in every frame,
my overcompensations, uphill efforts 
to sort you out and my third eye’s 	
staggering final snapshot— 
white cotton sheets, your body 
a snow angel, trapped in its final thrash.

Some moments are thrown hard.
You wished with everything you had
to never be born, reintroduced yourself
again and again, a swish of secrets—
one time a mother, next time a bird, 
third time a pebble, last time a fust of frost.

We All Get Woolly Near the End

All the best words plastered to the roof 
of her mouth, a crumpled goddess climbs dripless 
from the bathtub, hair loose, fluid. 

Somewhere a sacrificial lamb bleats, 
a serpent vines a tree, sets loose an apple. 
night becomes day becomes night.

Oh the weight she carries, so many losses 
with fries and upsized, plastic coat hangers 
clacking her first diagnosis of the day.

She hammers at calamity, 
collects sunlight in a paper bag,
drags it like an overburdened ant,

crawls stiff-kneed and rangy,
magics herself placid on the bathroom rug,
rebuilding her nest from the inside,

dumbstruck to discover doomed sheep 
squall the same irksome sound 
as newborn human infants.

KARI GUNTER-SEYMOUR is the Poet Laureate of Ohio. She focuses on lifting up underrepresented voices, including incarcerated teens and adults and women in recovery. Her poetry collections include Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner of the 2023 Book of the Year Award from American Book Fest and finalist for the NIEA award; 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 and Dirt Songs (forthcoming EastOver Press 2024). Her work has been featured on Verse Daily, World Literature Today, The New York Times and Poem-a-Day.

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