POETRY COLLECTIONS
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
Being accepted into poetry journals is always an honor as the process is competitive and the talent abundant. For me, finding the poem is the true delight (and often agony). Seeing my work in publications, along with others I admire, is the bonus.
Below, poems published 2022-2024:
MIRROR, MIRROR
I.
Eyes, eyes, wake up! Dogs gone. Staircase
narrow. Unreliable threshold, handrails.
Dust mixed in spit with chewing tobacco.
Watch your step! No way to run toward
the door out into the open square, streets
sky wide, dome filled with crying pigeons, far
away rattling trains, distant hoot of ships. Floor
covered with dirty luggage ripped and cheap,
chalk marks, frames breaking open like distor-
ted mouths. No space to disturb the universe.
Navigate a single light bulb, burned out
among cobwebs. To be young. To want
to leave. To not know what to do. All these
strangers waiting in line, keeping the door
open, letting in more flies and the heat, blinding
light from outside. Stink from the toilet. Shit
and vomit. A mother, young daughter, blood
down their chins. Helpless. My Moroccan bag,
wine red, heavy. I fling them my extra T-shirt
making the mime’s gesture circling my face.
Wind or crowd slam the door shut. Next
to the proprietere, keeper of keys, a wall:
chessboard of messages torn, thumbed
notes from underground. Grief’s crooked
root hooked in the writing on that wall.
One note—a woman’s name scribbled
across—torn from a passport.
II.
Holy, holy places like to be on high:
let visitors sweat before arriving, be
a little sore and thirsty, more easily
impressed. Surrounded by dolomite
steps, limestone stairs pouring down
toward city markets, hot lava. Gout
hates stairs and I hate the gout, but up
we go, hanging from banisters like
broken balloons. Sight scattered
among ancient Sahara gold. Crevice
crevice of the wall, what is the silence
of your call? Young in my marriage
I dream of children, don’t like it—
we’re separated by that wall. Such
is the law! I, on the women’s side, so close
to the men’s I can touch it, chanting the Shema
loud, my protesting trumpet. God knows
what happens when you silence women.
I repeated louder: Shema Yisrael. Listen Israel!
Later he claims he heard me among the tourist
buses and laughing church bells. In my pocket
a crumbled hotel receipt. I scribble my prayer
in Hebrew, making sure I close the final Mem
to keep the meaning. They’ll bury it in the Jewish
Cemetery on Mount Olive long after I am gone,
prayer answered? I remember backing away,
keeping my eyes on that tricky old wall of cold stone.
MILOSZ GOES TO DINNER
I am hard to find down muddy paths,
mossy stairs wedged in sage
and rhubarb. I don’t look like much,
tables covered in plastic. Toilet
narrow and cold. Steamy kitchen
smoke in corners from far away,
my accent bewilders even sea-
soned travelers. My tastes,
sauces, garnishes, the flavor
of my gateaux, puddings and cakes
not to speak of liver or roast
appeal to all who come, plates full
of gravy, boiled potatoes, bread
fresh and cold butter, dill from my
garden on everything, in everything.
Parsley in big bunches I cut with
mother’s knife from the market in
Kokoszkowy. Watch what you see,
what you hear, what you get good
at—that you will do. The old man
eats with serious intent focused
on memory-flavors, his mother’s
kitchen, the scratched table,
three chairs and a black iron stove.
They say he’s famous now, won
a big poetry prize and a future
unclouded by hunger or war—
but he visits me to share our past.
PUBLISHED IN PIRENE’S FOUNTAIN
BORDER NOTE
Cook now the ancient way, black
iron kettle on the open fire like my
grandmothers and their mothers did
put in it whatever you find: potato, turnip
rutabaga, carrot, swede. Laugh at the name
when you add the swede, so tough and dry
won’t break for nothing, hard to digest. We boiled
old Kristina when she stopped laying eggs
heat bricks in the fire, stick them under your skirt
your great grandmother was tied to the stockage
for stealing bread to feed her sons. I must give you
the ornate antique silver spoon my mother gave me
on the night before my wedding, the last last thing
here of value, large but supple. You can hang it
inside your shirt, a leather thong around your neck
I found some fallen apples under your birthday tree
but left them on the ground
some knowledge we just can’t live with
how many people have we never met, yet remember?
Your mother in the food lines after the 2nd war
hearing they had too many holes left in those chimneys
twice now I have dreamt you came in quietly
behind me, following. Starling shadow
what does that mean?
PUBLISHED IN PIRENE’S FOUNTAIN
THE DEAD DON’T DISAPPEAR
Hasse had a yellow vespa
he let me ride around the block
I would have taken his name
his hands were beautiful
and told me everything I needed.
On his 18th birthday, his parents
gave him a little red sports car
A month later he was dead.
Robert got caught between his need
for drugs and the men from Yugoslavia.
He asked me to care for his cat,
but my mother hates pets so I said no.
The cat died, too, when Robert
turned on the gas.
Johan, which wasn’t his real name,
waited for the Stockholm train
to pick up speed on its northern track
and then he ran right into it.
Nothing left. They only found
his earring.
When Kari came back
after the accident she walked funny
and she looked at me—eyes empty—
no longer knowing we
were best friends.
My sister didn’t die that time either
because her roommate had forgotten
her textbook, ran up the stairs again,
found a bloody mess. Memory
a phonebook, old and full of names.
PUBLISHED IN SLANT, A JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY, FALL 2023
DECEMBER BREAKFAST
One red-bellied woodpecker swinging on the suet,
a splash of colors, not shy at all, as if you can hide
your true nature behind a rainbow palette. I’ll try
with some bright zinnia lipstick, and count
six red cardinals in the glistening snow strutting
around without a worry in this world.
I watch them through a dark blue
cloud for a second not minding the fat
squirrel chasing them across the stream.
They’ll be back soon. Four ring doves
two couples always together and paired
ignore the squirrel or click their beaks at him
so he stays on the other side of the large stone
by the bird feeder. In time for Thanksgiving,
eight rats moved in under that black stone
and helped themselves from my compost heap.
Both fascinated and disgusted by their quick
bodies and thieving ways. Highway robbery!
I mourned and didn’t mourn when the red tailed
hawk got them and got them good. Clean murder
under my fragile little lilac bush.
PUBLISHED IN THE WORCESTER REVIEW, VOL. 44
KNOWN THIS STORY ALL MY LIFE
He was just a boy then, alone, leading the giant stallions
—Thunder and Lightning—pulling timber from the forest
to the road. He saw three branches sweep
an empty sky and knew his future son would die.
When it started to rain, he unbridled the horses
and took them down the stream to drink
and huddle under a bridge. Later, when he
couldn’t do it, he remembered. His hands cut
down his favorite cherry tree, white blooms
falling on a cross of honey almost too heavy—
brought it north into the mountain, above the snow
line, where his son’s plane crashed during the war.
PUBLISHED IN SILK ROAD REVIEW, 2023
IN MY LANGUAGE
the word for thank you, “tack,” is short and bright
like a good clang
on a tuning fork, it reverberates in the space
between host and guest,
its vibrato cuts through any post-dinner
reverie, the two hard
consonants, the quick vowel. “Thank you “
with the lazy vowels
and shuffling echo adds to an after-dinner malaise
and can’t free us
standing by the door to her rich home
her eyebrows quick like little birds rising,
warblers perhaps, but not shy, or the nuthatch
climbing up the fat trunk of her face.
Thank you! I try again and see juncos jump
forward in the snow
only to scratch the surface in swift clawing motions
to unveil a crumb
or a seed. A seed is a seed if it nourishes.
The husk just blows away.
PUBLISHED IN REDACTIONS: POETRY & POETICS #27
Summer, 2023
SISTERS
I wish, and I don’t wish, my sister would stay away.
If she returns, we’ll have to share corners, sharp crystals she wears under her skin.
She runs with a hammer and a ghost. How to trade peace in such a place?
Biting the dark, a young man raises his hand to greet her.
I tried a prayer. It cut right through like a corkscrew, spilling the wine.
No rain this evening and only a pattern of leaves on my hand.
Mother sleeps on the blue bed, father not yet back from war.
Sand and dust in layers by our door when I hang words on the clothesline.
While they shrink and dry, I must bury the birds, pretty birds, red and golden.
PUBLISHED IN TRAMPOLINE POETRY, Issue #18.4, July, 2023
OLD MAN TIES THE STRING WHILE I BREATHE
Air tightens. Dust from outside. Smoke coasting
along our stubborn train. Time crooked
and bent like the ancient roads for mules
carrying wood and grapes up and down
the mountain outside the window. No name
in my books and I’m forgetting my own
as the uniformed man screams. Dogs think
we’ll understand them if they bark louder.
Time wrinkles its nose at his sweat and bends
my head down. His shoes. One dusty, one
polished like a mirror. Bystryy! Faster!
I must hurry but doing what? I pull out
my passport to show him, meek, fake smile
under my bangs. Hand ignored. Shoes
closer, knee grinds against mine, lifting
my skirt, he bends, knife in hand. To buy
time, I say Tak, Russian for stalling.
Between my legs he pulls out my package.
Too impatient he cuts the string, snip
snip, he tears the wrapping, stares at me.
Without a word he leaves to read
a stolen two-week-old newspaper.
PUBLISHED IN TIKKUN, March, 2023
A HAMMER’S WORK
On the day the family moved to a bigger farm,
painted red, it mattered little they didn’t own
the land—the father gave his young son,
who understood its purpose, a hammer.
The boy had already tried to lift light
from puddles and fields, failing. Now armed
he started hammering by the kitchen stairs
every glimmering drop of light, every glistening
pool of a puddle, He distrusted birds that flew
away and hadn’t heard of oceans, but he knew
what gets seeded in the dark grows. Palms
blistering hot, he drank the sound he made,
scratching the earth, for laughter and Papa’s
accordion. His sister, my mother, still listens
and sleeps with a hammer under her pillow.
PUBLISHED IN CONCHO RIVER REVIEW,
Fall/Winter 2022, Page 73
A WINTER’S TALE
Head down, a man sits on the frozen asphalt.
When he looks up, I see he’s younger than my girls.
A scar divides his face from his forehead
down the left cheek. A whip. A sword. Knife in the dark.
A right-handed assailant from the looks of it.
Our eyes meet but he says nothing. Doesn’t move.
I carry in my bra a fifty-dollar bill for emergencies
still warm when my hand touches his, avoiding the beggar’s cup.
Like all journeying children, he wants to know
are we there yet? When will we be home?
PUBLISHED IN DOUBLY MAD JOURNAL, February, 2023
BEFORE THE LIGHTHOUSE (1796)
They named it Coal Hill and said it was a sand heap,
but we knew Candy Mountain where lovers meet
at night, wander down winding rabbit tracks
to the sea. Light up the beach with kisses,
forbidden fires of drift wood, sea weed. Your hand
glowing when you twirled a torch around and around.
They said the Danish King ordered coal to be lit
for sea safety, to warn the Hansa merchant ships
from Lubeck and Hamburg already in 1222. Rich
times. Herring so thick in the water women and children
fished with their hands. Did His Royal Highness know
monks are scared of the Devil? Sleep indoors at night?
You told me of your old relative who died
in 1624. On his gravestone he was a sea captain.
Some Captain, you said. More a bloody pirate if you ask
me. He came here to Candy Mountain, lit illegitimate fires
to lure the ships to shallow waters where they foundered
and broke apart. Men died quickly in those days. We stole
gold, food, brandy from France, took their boots and jewels.
How do you think we came to own our long house,
my family poor fishermen, and kept it for five centuries
between frost and salt? This here, like the land and you,
have never been bought or sold. In the palm of your hand,
a shiny piece of amber, a gift and an answer.
PUBLISHED IN NIXES MATE REVIEW, Issue 23,
Spring 2022
FEW RIVERS RUN NORTH BUT MORE THAN YOU THINK
the wide and wavy Nile rushes into the Mediterranean Sea,
the Russian Ob, Lena, and Yenisev pour toward the icy north,
the Orinoco joins the Atlantic in the warm Caribbean
I remember when I watch the young men, my friends,
float nonchalantly into the abandoned market square
standing among rotting cabbage leaves and apple peels
school is good for geography, but what when the gang
hops on the band wagon and decides to do a 1968 thing?
They learn from Paris, France, the value of occupation
as revolutionary action against capitalism and brutality.
My friends wave no flags, don’t say much, smell old
in the breeze, share a match. Smoke everywhere. The sound
of sirens from the hospital. On a signal I can’t read
in the mist and falling dusk, they all begin to move
as one without stopping, swirling water around
lampposts and trash cans. I know where they’re
going but say nothing. Just follow with my bike
heading north to the building they’ve picked.
They ripple upstairs like a flock of geese taking off over
dark waters just as the church bells start to ring. Some
even take the elevator in their exuberance.
One flies an airplane made from yesterday’s paper, another
flicks a cigarette butt. Not all will survive. I see their feet
dangling from the roof, the bottoms of their restless feet.
PUBLISHED IN THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POETRY
JANUARY 12, 2022, VOLUME TWELVE
FROM THE PLAGUE YEAR
When more people die than get sick
it means they are taken unaware
away from home in midstream.
It means dwarf cassoway blooms,
helichrysium arenarium in lim soil
give a scent of curry, golden flowers
like papyrus. I feel water deepening
around me. See, it’s reflected in the sky.
Birds swimming in and out of woven clouds
blue stars in the weave, reeling like ships,
smell of hyacinth and horses. Don’t
take me east, I whisper at the border,
prisons larger than castles, camps. Blue
flowers never last. You’re going down-
stream. Here’s a coin for your passage.
PUBLISHED IN PENDEMICS JOURNAL NO. 3, LIMINAL
KNOWN THIS STORY
ALL MY LIFE
He was just a boy then, alone, leading the giant stallions
—Thunder and Lightning—pulling timber from the forest
to the road. He saw three branches sweep
an empty sky and knew his future son would die.
When it started to rain, he unbridled the horses
and took them down the stream to drink
and huddle under a bridge. Later, when he
couldn’t do it, he remembered. His hands cut
down his favorite cherry tree, white blooms
falling on a cross of honey almost too heavy—
brought it north into the mountain, above the snow
line, where his son’s plane crashed during the war.
PUBLISHED IN SILK ROAD REVIEW, 2023
LADDER DIES BY LIGHT
Whitethorn spear raised higher than the lilacs,
honeysuckle strangling nettles and the bramble,
scent so sweet I almost fall into tall grasses
wild clover already to my middle. Moss on stones,
steps, doors, trees. Where are the feet? I counted
their steps to measure my height. Tall as a tower,
taller than salt. Before people can come, I’m no good
even for fire. What with the worm, mold, the rot?
I used to fret over the lack of rest, the moving
me around just like a tool. But I’m no fool here
now in this hibernation. Know I am as useless
as this house I’m leaning on.
PUBLISHED IN GREAT LAKES REVIEW
April 21, 2022
LEMON SILENCE
This morning the dentist. She scraped my old teeth
clean like a Roman monument or the Sacré Coeur
in Montmartre where Stendahl and Zola rest. Every
spring in Paris they start washing her north of the main
gate and reach the other side a year later only to see
she’s already blackened where they began. You left
me a lemon on the doorstep. It seemed all spring we set
up camp every night to pull it down again in the morning
each day we got faster got faster at tearing things down
I took comfort from the great poet who wrote angels
cannot distinguish between the living and the dead.
On the stone steps the lemon you left.
Juncos’ nest in the hanging basket by the front door
greeted me for a month with their tsktsktsk warning calls
facing me from roof or birch branches whether I
was leaving or coming home. Shady place. Plant shaggy.
Greens pouring out along the sides like a waterfall.
My Puerto Rican friend says these birds are lucky signs
in his country—are we not now both of us American
born or otherwise included—when he smashed his car,
black blossoms on his torso. Could no longer speak.
Luck is to know which silence hurts and which doesn’t.
PUBLISHED IN SWWIM, October 6, 2022
MILK & COCA COLA
When I grew up we bought milk in heavy
glass bottles and it wasn’t homogenized—
large blobs of cloudy fat swam in a bluish
liquid. Made me sick and once I dropped
a bottle in the staircase on my way to our
third-floor apartment and got yelled at, had
to pick up the shards and scour the steps, got
glass in my thumb and came home bleeding.
I was that girl. Bounced a lonely tennis ball
against the dirt-yellow tenement housing
wall, again and again. When a neighbor gave
me a glass of Coca Cola, I finished it in one
ecstatic swallow and loved its prickly taste
until I felt sick and had to go home.
Where I grew up we had Finns who drank
too much homemade vodka and fought
each other, knives up their sleeves.
I saw them carry a bleeding man down
the street when I was ten. In my head
I hid words that much resembled drops
of blood mixed with broken glass and dirt.
PUBLISHED IN SLIPSTREAM PRESS
PEPPER & WINE
Walk with me. Old harbor naked and sad. Smell of peach
in our beech trees. Leaves we ate every spring
no matter how bitter. Nettles, too, prickly like hedgehogs.
Didn’t I hear you long before I found you? Sails, salty, put away,
a harvest already foreign where it grew. Accent added later
by maps and travel, by accident you may say. Geography
nothing but an old carpet sprayed with spit. Tiresome,
memories of men who left and left, tongues drooling,
bowing to the god of adventure. I stood in the shade
by the gate watching them leave, carefree and laughing.
Absence made me see things. When you took that long,
didn’t I know what you were doing? Weaving nests
and nets to find me. When you finally asked,
I was free to welcome both spice and grapes.
PUBLISHED IN BOOK OF MATCHES, Issue Six. Fall 2022.
Poetry Section, Page 1
THE VERBLESS
“How did you lose all your verbs?
I ask him and since he cannot tell me,
he begins to gesture, points to my kitchen,
the stove, the old broom, shaking his head.
Ahh! Many verbs you left behind at home;
I try to translate his verbless intent.
Your wife and daughters are sweeping
leftover verbs into a pile they cannot read,
hidden behind a door, next to the stove,
where they are protected and preserved?
He points out the window toward the beach
where waves break, break, break, a restless
gray sentence without end. Ahh! Some verbs
sank on your perilous journey, many more lost
among the murdered and the drowned.
You still hear them scream in clear calls
against the smugglers and the storms.
He lifts my hands to his temples. Ahh!
Other verbs you lost track of in your memory.
Life forced you to abandon the joyful verbs,
the cool, strong, and the needed verbs
until your tongue became a migrant too.
PUBLISHED IN STONE POETRY QUARTERLY
November, 2022
(Also accepted into Aloha Magazine and Yellow Arrow Journal)
TRAINED IN GUITAR PLAYING
The right hand has a white scar
running from index to little finger
in a slanted rugged line
reminding me to never again climb a roof
of corrugated steel or hold onto its edge
so easy to slip and slide toward the ladder
steel cutting like a sharp knife the whole way.
My left hand cupped a bowl of fresh blood. Took
me ten years to bend the fingers into my palm.
No extra ice cream money from doing dishes
but I can write with it and thumb to ring
finger can do a damn fast cool arpeggio.
The little finger on the left is a prime player
strong and eager, the leader of the pack
the edge of that hand a map of years
of hard labor and controlled effort. When
I line the hands up palm to palm and fan
out my fingers, the little finger on the left
sticks out an extra half an inch after years
of practicing, reaching for that demanding
note, distinct, desired, yet a full five frets away.
PUBLISHED IN THE MACGUFFIN, Fall, 2022, VOL. XXXVIII, NO. 2
Visit link below, to hear Gunilla Kester’s favorite poems, recorded.
Poetry Collection:
1984 - Present
COAST LINE
I know we are at war;
ugly as frogs, graceful as angels,
we don’t seem to hear a choice.
The price for no is high
but the price for yes is even higher;
we don’t want to wander into either.
Anger and despair, shame and fear
fuel our steps and fill them with
the hum of some other response.
I arrive at the mountain in the morning
with a song so fresh and new;
how can I make you hear its will to live?
War surrounds us,
it’s the sound we wake to;
it’s our only lullaby.
Our mother says God made
a woman’s blood thick and sticky,
so she would be sure to remember.
Our sister sings a song of pain;
she tells us to forget about it, but
wants us to find the harmony.
Our brother follows the beat of a drum
and dreams of a glistening glory;
he’ll hear nothing of defeat.
Our father walks the beast of drums,
destined to devour our children,
drink their screams and feed on yours.
Our heroes get their throats slit;
our sheroes embrace equally
lonely explosives, fatherless children.
The melody is older than our ancestors,
skittish and unpredictable, we’re like April snow;
the words we’ll add we don’t yet know.
COMING HOME
I know we are at war;
ugly as frogs, graceful as angels,
we don’t seem to hear a choice.
The price for no is high
but the price for yes is even higher;
we don’t want to wander into either.
Anger and despair, shame and fear
fuel our steps and fill them with
the hum of some other response.
I arrive at the mountain in the morning
with a song so fresh and new;
how can I make you hear its will to live?
War surrounds us,
it’s the sound we wake to;
it’s our only lullaby.
Our mother says God made
a woman’s blood thick and sticky,
so she would be sure to remember.
Our sister sings a song of pain;
she tells us to forget about it, but
wants us to find the harmony.
Our brother follows the beat of a drum
and dreams of a glistening glory;
he’ll hear nothing of defeat.
Our father walks the beast of drums,
destined to devour our children,
drink their screams and feed on yours.
Our heroes get their throats slit;
our sheroes embrace equally
lonely explosives, fatherless children.
The melody is older than our ancestors,
skittish and unpredictable, we’re like April snow;
the words we’ll add we don’t yet know.
DAY DREAM
I know we are at war;
ugly as frogs, graceful as angels,
we don’t seem to hear a choice.
The price for no is high
but the price for yes is even higher;
we don’t want to wander into either.
Anger and despair, shame and fear
fuel our steps and fill them with
the hum of some other response.
I arrive at the mountain in the morning
with a song so fresh and new;
how can I make you hear its will to live?
War surrounds us,
it’s the sound we wake to;
it’s our only lullaby.
Our mother says God made
a woman’s blood thick and sticky,
so she would be sure to remember.
Our sister sings a song of pain;
she tells us to forget about it, but
wants us to find the harmony.
Our brother follows the beat of a drum
and dreams of a glistening glory;
he’ll hear nothing of defeat.
Our father walks the beast of drums,
destined to devour our children,
drink their screams and feed on yours.
Our heroes get their throats slit;
our sheroes embrace equally
lonely explosives, fatherless children.
The melody is older than our ancestors,
skittish and unpredictable, we’re like April snow;
the words we’ll add we don’t yet know.
FROM THE PLAGUE YEAR
When more people die than get sick
it means they are taken unaware
away from home in midstream.
It means dwarf cassoway blooms,
helichrysium arenarium in lim soil
give a scent of curry, golden flowers
like papyrus. I feel water deepening
around me. See, it’s reflected in the sky.
Birds swimming in and out of woven clouds
blue stars in the weave, reeling like ships,
smell of hyacinth and horses. Don’t
take me east, I whisper at the border,
prisons larger than castles, camps. Blue
flowers never last. You’re going down-
stream. Here’s a coin for your passage.
