Kari Gunter-Seymour | A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen | Sheila-Na-Gig Editions | April 2020 | 64 Pages
The Weeds In This Garden
Long ago, I built a self outside myself.
I ate what my family ate, answered
to my name, but when they said let us pray,
I kept my eyes open. There is a price
to be paid for resistance. Whatever
you call me, I have called myself
worse, invented words made up
of letters from my own name.
Now the backs of my hands, all bone
and strain, I think cannot be mine.
Who hasn’t killed herself at least once,
only to grow into someone needier?
Who hasn’t bent with her wounds
to a mutinous patch, weeds
shooting up like false rhubarb,
every wisp, stem, and sodden pith
a testament? Who hasn’t scratched
at the question of what it means to be here?
“The Weeds In This Garden” from A Place So Deep Inside American It Can’t Be Seen.
Copyright © 2020 by Kari Gunter-Seymour.
Reprinted with permission of Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio, a ninth generation Appalachian and the founder and executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project. She is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and the editor of the Women Speak anthology series as well as I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices, funded by the Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Verse Daily, World Literature Today, Poets.org, as well as on her website.
Kari Gunter-Seymour
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship recipient. Her poetry collections include Dirt Songs (EastOver Press, 2024) winner of the 2025 Feathered Quill Award, 2024 POTY Award and STORYTRADE Award; Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner of the 2024 Legacy Award, the 2023 Best Book Award, and finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award; and 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. A ninth generation Appalachian, she is the executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series, Women Speak. Gunter-Seymour holds writing workshops for incarcerated adults and women in recovery, is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and the founder, curator, and host of "Spoken & Heard," a seasonal performance series featuring poets, writers, and musicians from across the country. She is the editor of I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices, funded through the Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She was selected to serve as a 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival Poet and is a Pillars of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, World Literature Today, American Book Review, Poem-a-Day and Wake Up Call.