Len Kuntz

Len Kuntz

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State. His work appears widely in print and online at such places as Eunoia Review, Matchbox Lit, Banana Fish and also at lenkuntz.blogspot.com

Little Boy Lost

I was not supposed to
write this,
not today of all days,
sun shining through sideways fingers of rain
that dimple my window
with incriminations and reminders
of another time
when you waited for me on a pale blue beach chair,
the one with the purposely chipped paint
and for some reason when I arrived
you said, “We are kind of like this chair, don’t you think?”
That night I combed the beach as it started spitting, drizzling, hissing on the sand and sea,
freckled starshine glittering on the black glass
as it roved like a panther into itself and out,
in and out this indiscriminate judge.
And I thought about how I loved you
and how that had eaten us alive,
such gory gluttony,
my need like a current sucking you into its vortex,
strangling you,
smothering you.

And I did not cry
nor did I return.
I let you go,
in my immature misery
that has now
all these years later
found itself a place to rest
here on my death bed,
weathered
wrinkled
and poorly worn.

Justifiable Homicide

It was not about guns or other weapons, yet violence shivered in her eyes bright as the glinting silver of metal,
her breath sticky like bloody blades wanting so desperately to slice me, to make me pay for what I’d done.

There Will Not Be Any Hostages

Blades are the new black.
Blood drips from the tip of each wrong answer.
In the kitchen the phone wails like a wounded feline.
Where I am
the wind tastes the same as curdled milk
while my fingers go sore from praying.
In time the axis will surely falter
and that the sun can burn us down.
no hostages or ransoms,
just a fitting end.

New York Mining Disaster

We mine this disaster for more than it’s worth.
I had forgotten how sharp your teeth are, your nails.
In the fractured spaces where your eyes used to be
And slits lined with broken bits of glass.
Your new boyfriend might think them diamonds,
But he’ll learn soon enough.

Tourists

Rain falls like liquid ash,
fingers clawing for exit
from the dank
earth where bones once collected in
bins and troughs.

We had come here with somber hearts,
without notes or answers
to offer a decent burial.
Pulling away from Bergen-Belsen
the woman by the window
takes up a song in Czech,
and though the rest of us are Americans,
we find her cadence,
a lilt.
We sing till we’ve
reached the rich, warm center where
healing begins.

Ages

There are long lists.
Scrolled names that belong to beings.
Someone’s son.
Another one’s best girl.

Even the most savage wolves
do not eat their own
and boast of such slaughter.

Let this be a lesson, then,
for the ages.

Love Wins

We hang on wire
near no one’s heaven.
Stink of charcoal and ash
melt a putrid sky.
The wind won’t stop weeping
and forever will wear
the scars of these moments.
For now, though,
we imagine a God who loves.
We remember forgiveness
and remind ourselves
that,
in the end,
love always wins.

Teacher

My daughter is asking, “Why? Why?”

On the screen
specters shuffle
from one death cell to the next.
“Isn’t that the same sun as ours?” she asks.

Ordinarily I am too quick to answer,
but now I lock my jaw,
allowing the past
to teach.

Shoes

I still remember that grainy photograph--
a mountain of discarded shoes,
survivors walking past
without looking,
trying so hard
not to remember.

Ragged Liberty

You are no longer a stain
and there are no more poems about
bruised sunsets or tainted milk.
I can see an end now,
twisting beyond dulcet hills,
where the black-skirted sun stands in wait
likes a stern nun,
hands on hips,
telling me to suck it up,
to do this on my own.

I Saw the Picture

Of you and him,
the false smile
as if stitched there by well-paid surgeons,
your Christmas sweater an imperfect fit,
a fireplace behind you.
But even the flames took umbrage
and shuddered.
The man to your right was good,
but he had been your accomplice too many times,
and so today, while you’re both long gone,
should someone should ask,
I’ll deny it with a straight face,
the fact that you were ever my parents.

Therapy

My assignment was to write you a letter.
“Make it cruel. Hold back nothing.”
But my cistern’s been cracked all these years.
At fourteen I became a suit of skin
and had no way home.
I watched the blood and turpentine drizzle
between sidewalk cracks,
heard the worms hiss below.
I was a boy but became
a rubber man.

I have nothing left to fling.
my voice is hoarse,
my fingernails clipped from clawing.

So, come close,
give me your ear and listen as I tell you,
Go your own way,
and be at peace.

Geography

In India the turrets
are shaped like ice cream cones.
In Brazil Jesus looms taller than a skyscraper.
In Italy you might be walking down an alley
and find some ancient bust carved into a wall next to an
abandoned phone booth.

In this home the attics are stuffed with your old stilettos,
the Messiah stares at me from the mantle,
and the only marble statues I can find are the frigid memories
of our unproductive love.

The Waiting Area

When I reach for her, she shudders but gives a brittle smile.
Always she is reeling.
On a boat once the waves rollicked.
The sun and moon were paired like estranged relatives trapped together in a large room.
I have answers and questions.
We wait in the clinic so bright and vicious.
When she was a little I would become friendly monsters
and chase her from corner to corner.
Now there are real ones
and they’re much faster than me.

Eavesdropper

My brothers are wrestlers but they have fists and knuckles, agility, too.
I should not have snooped.
The door was cracked.
I heard the lolling like a sick cow.
The sound seemed dark and slick and I moved toward it like a curious blind person,
my heart so big inside a bird’s chest.
This is how we learn.
This is how life scuttles us along.

Forced Upon

His breath smelled of smoke,
his eyes firecrackers, Black Cats—the dangerous kind.
When he licked my ear I said, “You can’t do that.”
Around evening the picnic was done.
There were so many trees,
these tall hoodlums with their long-armed shadows.
I wanted a brighter moon, but there were clouds.
Someone had forgotten a fork.
It would happen sooner or later but I still put up a fight.

A Perfect Moment

Your irises are islands
floating in a white sea,
so large and warm this morning,
just up,
your breath tickling my nose,
sash haying my bangs like
the fingers of a light wind.

See, Sea, She

Your eyes are encyclopedias, glossaries,
globes spinning countries and continents.
Hey, Madagascar, Mauritius,
wait for me!
I take your hand but your fingers waver.
Your rope is tethered elsewhere.
You are floating a blue sea
without me.

Zombie

Your shoulder is a rock a husk a spire so prickly on my cheek.
When you reach for the remote it slices my jawline,
gorges out my eye, then the other,
leaving me how you’ve always said I am:
One more loser stuck here among the living dead.