After the fever, 
a lingering dry cough 
comes to remind, 
things are not quite healed. 

What ails, the bristling wind, the distant 
explosion, fault lines tilting. 
The expectations are to pen every tragic moment 
into a healing metaphor, 

so I think of flowers, 
but my son, in his budding life, 
tells me to stop writing about flowers, 
yet all my disasters find rhyme 

with larkspur and Queen Anne’s lace, 
and in the absence of healing, 
I think of tulips, frozen and waiting 
under February’s wrath.

Laurie Kuntz

is an award-winning poet and film producer, and the author of six books. Her poetry collections include That Infinite Roar (Gyroscope Press, 2023), The Moon Over My Mother’s House (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and Somewhere in the Telling (Edwin Mellen Press, 1999). Her chapbooks include Talking Me Off The Roof (Kelsay Books, 2022); Simple Gestures, winner of the Texas Review Poetry Chapbook Contest (Texas Review Press, 2000); and Women at the Onsen, winner of the Blue Light Press Chapbook Contest (Blue Light Press, 2001). Her newest manuscript, Shelter In Place, was a finalist for the Louis Prize from Concrete Wolf Publishers.

Her poems have been published in Gyroscope Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Literary Mama, ONE ART, Roanoke Review, Sheila Na Gig, SWWIM, and Third Wednesday, among many others. Her work has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Net Awards. Her poem “My Father Remembers” won a Pushcart Prize and appears in the 2025 edition of the anthology (Volume XLIX, December 2024). Happily retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind.

More details are available at the author’s website:
https://lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com/home-1