This selection, chosen by guest editor Sierra Farrare, is from Alone in the House of My Heart by Kari Gunter-Seymour (Ohio University Press 2022).
Alone in the House of My Heart
Without warning, the bane of my being
sends me a text about a four-inch-long scratch
on my toddler grandson’s arm, one that,
swear to God, he already had when
he arrived for our last visit.
I know she is trying to set my son up,
document false evidence so he will lose
privileges or the right to see his fragile boy,
who runs on all fours, hides in the dog’s crate
the minute anyone sets foot inside the house.
When I think of her, this young woman,
obviously lonely, who wanted to get married—
a sharp-edged prickle inside my head
repeats, Beware!
She started sleeping with crystals,
my son says, scratching his head—
I mean actual rocks in our bed.
On nights I drink too much wine
I blame myself—my A-line skirts,
Weight Watchers diets,
my son growing up single-mommed
inside small-town America,
lured off course by a spritz
of patchouli, a flash of black lace.
Tonight I weep for all I cannot fix,
wish for a newfangled deity to implore,
a let’s make a deal beyond altar and incense,
a clearinghouse for the backlog of karma.
I drape a makeshift veil over my head,
one hand raised in supplication,
the other shielding my heart.
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the 2020–24 poet laureate of Ohio and the author of A Place So Deep inside America It Can’t Be Seen. A ninth-generation Appalachian, she is the editor of I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices and the founder and host of the seasonal performance series Spoken & Heard. Her poems have appeared in the New York Times, New Ohio Review, One, and numerous other publications.
Sierra Farrare is a short fiction writer from Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to a limited self-published run of her collection, Friday Night Hand Grenade, you can also find her work featured in Pretty Owl Poetry and University of Baltimore’s Welter.
- Sundress Reads: Review of Under The Rain - May 6, 2026
- Project Bookshelf: Brianna Eaton - May 6, 2026
- Project Bookshelf: Tara Rahman - May 6, 2026