The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: That Infinite Roar by Laurie Kuntz

This selection, chosen by guest editor Shira Haus, is from That Infinite Roar by Laurie Kuntz (Gyroscope Press, 2023).

Old Married Couple Cutting Watermelon

There are some things
we just don’t do well together.
I am not your tennis partner.
There are some mountains you climb alone.
I cannot sing while you tune your guitar.
But, we have learned the rhythm of
a couple with a cleaver.

We both know how to check for ripeness.
A lawn green skin with a yellow sun
bursting at its center.
An ear to the rind,
checking for the sea caught in a shell sound.

At home, we prepare the counter
find a balance so the orb does not roll,
fill containers with a ruby red squares
that will quench our aging thirst.

One July day, while you napped
the temperature grew thick
as a watermelon skin.
Alone in the kitchen, I tackled the green ball
with a serrated edge,
found the sweet spot on the counter
to conquer the roll, sliced the fruit
in halves and quarters until tins were glowing
with squares looking like polished gems.

What I thought was a job for two,
I could do by myself–
handle a knife, square a slice, dispose of rinds,
fill a bowl that only I would gorge from,
a selfish appetite quenched.

Alone, in the kitchen,
I picked the ripest pieces,
but the juices did not burst,
nor run over my tongue
with the same coupled sweetness.

Laurie Kuntz is an award-winning poet and film producer. She taught creative writing and poetry in Japan, Thailand and the Philippines. Many of her poetic themes are a result of her working with Southeast Asian refugees in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines for over a decade after the Vietnam War years. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College.
She has published six poetry collections: That Infinite Roar, Talking Me Off The Roof, The Moon Over My Mother’s House, Simple Gestures, Women at the Onsen, and Somewhere in the Telling. Her book, Simple Gestures, won the Texas Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, and Women at the Onsen won the Blue Light Press Chapbook Contest.
She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Net Prizes. Her work has been published in Gyroscope Review, Roanoke Review, Third Wednesday, OneArt, Sheila Na Gig, The Bloomsbury Review, The MacGuffin, The Louisville Review, The Charlotte Poetry Review, The Roanoke Review, The Southern Review, The New Virginia Review, The South Florida Review, and many other literary journals and anthologies.
She produced the documentaries, Do Tell, on the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Law, and Strangers to Peace, a documentary on the Colombian peace process and reintegration of guerrilla soldiers in Colombia.
She has been writing poetry since she could hold a pen. She currently resides in Florida, where every day is a political poem waiting to be written. Retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind.

Shira Leah Haus (she/her) is a queer, antizionist Jewish writer from Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and wildness, among others. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and placed third in the 2024 Pinch Literary Awards for poetry.