Simple Gestures

The poetry of Simple Gestures shifts the landscape beneath the reader’s feet. The planet is the poet’s terrain. Kuntz introduces the redolent smell of a Saigon market, then guides us to a Japanese hot bath. The lined hands of an old woman in Brooklyn give way to a class mouthing familiar vowels in a Philippine refugee camp. From the exotic to the everyday, survival- physical and emotional- is the filament that binds disparate worlds to each other. Personal and cultural ties are slashed and refastened, giving readers poetry of the heart and spirit. Hysterical Blindness

Let’s start with something beautiful,

and I expect her to invoke
incense burning in brass holders,
lotus ponds on temple grounds.

Or, her daughter’s slim shoulders covered
in printed Cambodian silk, arms swaying
to brass gongs, bamboo flutes.

But her eyes only twitch and flutter.
Late autumn light seeps
through hospital Venetian blinds,

the light Chanthy misses the most,
the sphere of light from gilded pagodas,
dawn light across the her courtyard, spreading.

It’s light that haunts her.