Laurie
Kuntz
Photo of Laurie Kuntz
40 years ago at the Bennington Writing Workshop
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, Gyroscope Press,
Talking Me Off The Roof, Kelsay Books, The Moon Over My Mother’s House,
Finishing Line Press, Simple Gestures, Texas Review Press, Women at the Onsen,
Blue Light Press and Somewhere in the Telling, Mellen Press
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.
Visit her at:
Comments
by Sharon Waller Knutson
I
had never read Laurie Kuntz’s poetry until recently and when I got the opportunity,
I was enamored by her charming delightful poems.
The Paris Diner
Sometimes my appetite
scrolls back to the days
where I never worried
about greasy pleasures
dripping in sugared condiments,
and I want to be back at the Paris Diner
with you at 2:00 a.m., high from every urge.
The Paris Diner was not in Paris.
Paris was not in our vocabulary,
it was only a dive in Flatbush
that we stumbled into on nights
when everything was satiated
by a yearning for fries and ketchup and whipped cream
that dripped over those curved fountain glasses.
Between our heated flesh and furtive kisses,
we sipped something thick and creamy,
and our simple lives flowed through a paper straw.
"We'll always have Paris"
We were old by the time we got to Paris.
We always had Brooklyn, Bali, Bangkok, Brazil,
and on a September day our spider veined legs
walk the cobbled les rues de Montmartre
as we take Paris in hand
saving the most romantic city
when romance is a waning moon.
Returning home, we will be broiled in the quotidian
clinking teacups and tired routines.
In the midst of each other, we'll wake
on crisp seasonal mornings
with the knowledge that one day
the teacup will not clink,
and we will walk with ghosts
on cobblestones and gravel,
as one of us will be lucky
to still have Brooklyn, Bali, Bangkok, Brazil,
and always, Paris.
Infinite Tenderness
You called lost and broken down
one December night--
on a road amidst scarecrows and corn,
your car had dropped a fan belt
and I was tasked an endeavor into darkness
to find you.
The night choked me with weather and empty country roads--
no street names, nor landmarks,
just fields, leftover snow and taunting black ice.
A stranger brought you to safety that night
as darkness goaded me away from you.
Every winter storm since recalls your rage.
Once, in vengeance, I revealed
that Anna Karenina jumps in front of a train,
ruining the ending you were just about to read.
It was an ending you saw that night,
waiting for me to rescue you
from fan belts and wind.
Like Anna, I'm not good at saving others, or myself.
I fail at heroics--I’m better at baking a cake,
basting a turkey, or planting pansies--
If only I could steal myself
out from your anger,
rise to an occasion,
save you from a precipitous fall off a cliff
or venture to find your voice lost
in the Siberian wind.
Anna Karenina had infinite tenderness
but no one to save her,
unlike all the kindness that remains to rescue us.
The time we’ve had together leaves me breathless, as if running for a train
that I know will stop in places I never want to be again
but I board it anyway and take a window seat.
The Weight of Silence
The night is noisy,
not with motors
but with a thunderclap
of frog croaks and a rude wind--
if I turn a corner, the surf sounds,
if I leave my solitude
motors, motors everywhere,
even past the dusky light.
One night, I brought my son to the veranda
and asked him, between the bark of dogs
and the clash of katydids and crickets
where is pure silence--
the sound of no sound?
He turned the moment
to physics, vacuums, and deep space
but my thoughts could not hold his instructive voice,
wanting so much to escape the noise of facts,
until he said what I could understand:
When we stand in quietude
eventually, a heart beat will be heard.
Driving Back to El Monte
For the Pham Family
In your first winter, before El Nino,
when the weather was still predictable
and there was part-time shift work,
Bich gardened and the yard seeded into a lush profit
of fuchsia, bluebells, and guava trees.
Crimson morning glory bolted up a wooden trellis
and in a stone pool under the mossy cover
of lotus pods, Japanese Koi shimmered
like gold bricks that paid your way to California.
Draping wisteria
shaded Bich's bedroom window
and the scent of guava woke her
most mornings, as it had in Vietnam.
The rent was controlled,
the garden wasn't, set apart from the eyesores along Elliot Ave.
You both lived under the bloom of all that had been scattered.
Then the owners, needing a place
for their Ensenada relatives,
gave you a month's notice and you moved closer
to the minimum wage and better bus routes.
And that's how it was.
Until one day, wanting for something to lament,
you drove Bich back down Elliot Avenue,
both of you waiting for that splash of color.
What is it that makes people want
to cut everything down to blacktop,
or the need for something concrete?
You parked, blocking the driveway
and named the flowers gone,
the trees severed to stumps,
and the weeds warily waved like lovers
departing from distant docks
Sometimes my appetite
scrolls back to the days
where I never worried
about greasy pleasures
dripping in sugared condiments,
and I want to be back at the Paris Diner
with you at 2:00 a.m., high from every urge.
The Paris Diner was not in Paris.
Paris was not in our vocabulary,
it was only a dive in Flatbush
that we stumbled into on nights
when everything was satiated
by a yearning for fries and ketchup and whipped cream
that dripped over those curved fountain glasses.
Between our heated flesh and furtive kisses,
we sipped something thick and creamy,
and our simple lives flowed through a paper straw.
"We'll always have Paris"
We were old by the time we got to Paris.
We always had Brooklyn, Bali, Bangkok, Brazil,
and on a September day our spider veined legs
walk the cobbled les rues de Montmartre
as we take Paris in hand
saving the most romantic city
when romance is a waning moon.
Returning home, we will be broiled in the quotidian
clinking teacups and tired routines.
In the midst of each other, we'll wake
on crisp seasonal mornings
with the knowledge that one day
the teacup will not clink,
and we will walk with ghosts
on cobblestones and gravel,
as one of us will be lucky
to still have Brooklyn, Bali, Bangkok, Brazil,
and always, Paris.
Infinite Tenderness
You called lost and broken down
one December night--
on a road amidst scarecrows and corn,
your car had dropped a fan belt
and I was tasked an endeavor into darkness
to find you.
The night choked me with weather and empty country roads--
no street names, nor landmarks,
just fields, leftover snow and taunting black ice.
A stranger brought you to safety that night
as darkness goaded me away from you.
Every winter storm since recalls your rage.
Once, in vengeance, I revealed
that Anna Karenina jumps in front of a train,
ruining the ending you were just about to read.
It was an ending you saw that night,
waiting for me to rescue you
from fan belts and wind.
Like Anna, I'm not good at saving others, or myself.
I fail at heroics--I’m better at baking a cake,
basting a turkey, or planting pansies--
If only I could steal myself
out from your anger,
rise to an occasion,
save you from a precipitous fall off a cliff
or venture to find your voice lost
in the Siberian wind.
Anna Karenina had infinite tenderness
but no one to save her,
unlike all the kindness that remains to rescue us.
The time we’ve had together leaves me breathless, as if running for a train
that I know will stop in places I never want to be again
but I board it anyway and take a window seat.
The Weight of Silence
The night is noisy,
not with motors
but with a thunderclap
of frog croaks and a rude wind--
if I turn a corner, the surf sounds,
if I leave my solitude
motors, motors everywhere,
even past the dusky light.
One night, I brought my son to the veranda
and asked him, between the bark of dogs
and the clash of katydids and crickets
where is pure silence--
the sound of no sound?
He turned the moment
to physics, vacuums, and deep space
but my thoughts could not hold his instructive voice,
wanting so much to escape the noise of facts,
until he said what I could understand:
When we stand in quietude
eventually, a heart beat will be heard.
Driving Back to El Monte
For the Pham Family
In your first winter, before El Nino,
when the weather was still predictable
and there was part-time shift work,
Bich gardened and the yard seeded into a lush profit
of fuchsia, bluebells, and guava trees.
Crimson morning glory bolted up a wooden trellis
and in a stone pool under the mossy cover
of lotus pods, Japanese Koi shimmered
like gold bricks that paid your way to California.
Draping wisteria
shaded Bich's bedroom window
and the scent of guava woke her
most mornings, as it had in Vietnam.
The rent was controlled,
the garden wasn't, set apart from the eyesores along Elliot Ave.
You both lived under the bloom of all that had been scattered.
Then the owners, needing a place
for their Ensenada relatives,
gave you a month's notice and you moved closer
to the minimum wage and better bus routes.
And that's how it was.
Until one day, wanting for something to lament,
you drove Bich back down Elliot Avenue,
both of you waiting for that splash of color.
What is it that makes people want
to cut everything down to blacktop,
or the need for something concrete?
You parked, blocking the driveway
and named the flowers gone,
the trees severed to stumps,
and the weeds warily waved like lovers
departing from distant docks
