THE TROUBLE WITH APPLES

Kari Gunter-Seymour

We might should blame Eve,
or that rascal Newton.
But I say it was Gessler, bastard,
though who could have known
what would come of his vengeance –
Tell’s defiance, his son’s famous stance.

This perfectly delicious one,
grievously balanced, shadow shaped.
cloud guts, pithy and sweet, spewed
insides out, beyond freckled skin,
shards and debris making slick work
of that steel, that lead, spinning fast and true.

That silly boys would forever
set one to head, aim whatever,
egged on by the romance of muscle
and munitions. Killing fruit, then birds,
then animals, then each other.

Kari Gunter-Seymour’s newest collection A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, April 2020. Her work can be found in many fine publications including Still, Rattle, Main Street Rag, The American Journal of Poetry, and The LA Times, as well as on her website: www.karigunterseymourpoet.com. She is the founder and executive director of the “Women of Appalachia Project” (www.womenofappalachia.com); editor of the Women Speak anthology series and Essentially Athens Ohio; a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and Athens, Ohio Poet Laureate Emeritus