ONE ART’s February 2026 Reading

ONE ART’s February 2026 Reading

Sunday, February 1

Time: 2:00pm Eastern
Duration: 2-hours
Featured Readers: Kim Stafford, Kari Gunter-Seymour, J.D. Isip, Todd Davis, Grant Clauser

Tickets are FREE!

(donations appreciated)

>>> Register Here <<<

About The Featured Readers

Grant Clauser’s latest book is Temporary Shelters from Cornerstone Press. He is the author of five previous books, including Muddy Dragon on the Road to Heaven and Reckless Constellations. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry ReviewGreensboro ReviewKenyon ReviewSouthern Review and anthologies including Keystone Poetry and The Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia. His books and poems have won numerous awards including the 2023 Verse Daily Poem Prize. He’s an editor for a national media company and teaches poetry at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania. More at grantclauser.com

Todd Davis is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry—Ditch Memory: New & Selected Poems; Coffin Honey; Native Species; Winterkill; In the Kingdom of the Ditch; The Least of These; Some Heaven; and Ripe—as well as of a limited-edition chapbook, Household of Water, Moon, and Snow. He edited the nonfiction collection, Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball,and co-edited the anthologies A Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia and Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets. His writing has won the Midwest Book Award, the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Editors Prize, the Bloomsburg University Book Prize, and the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Silver and Bronze Awards. His poems appear in such noted journals and magazines as American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly ReviewThe Hudson Review, Iowa ReviewNorth American Review, Missouri Review, OrionPrairie SchoonerThe Southern Review, Southern Humanities ReviewWestern Humanities Review, and Poetry Daily. He is an emeritus fellow of the Black Earth Institute and soon-to-be professor emeritus of Environmental Studies and English at Pennsylvania State University.

J.D. Isip is a Pushcart and Bet of the Net nominated writer and professor of English, originally from Southern California, and currently living and teaching in South Texas. His full-length collections of poetry and creative nonfiction include Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015), Kissing the Wound, and Reluctant Prophets (both from Moon Tide Press, 2023 and 2025). He is currently editing The American Pop Culture Almanac, forthcoming for America’s 250th (Summer 2026) from Moon Tide Press.

Kari Gunter-Seymour (she/her) is the Poet Laureate of Ohio and the author of three award-winning collections of poetry, including Dirt Songs (EastOver Press 2024) winner of the IPPY Bronze, NYC Big Book and Feathered Quill Awards. She is the Executive Director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series Women Speak. Her work has been featured in a variety of journals and the American Book Review, Poem-a-Day, World Literature Today and The New York Times.

karigunterseymourpoet.com

I: karigunterseymour

Kim Stafford, founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, teaches and travels to raise the human spirit. He taught writing at Lewis & Clark College for forty years before retiring and becoming Professor Emeritus in 2020. He is the author of twenty books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft and 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared. He has written about his poet father in Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford, and his book Having Everything Right: Essays of Place won a special citation for excellence from the Western States Book Award. His most recent poetry collections are As the Sky Begins to Change (Red Hen, 2024) and A Proclamation for Peace Translated for the World (Little Infinities, 2024). He has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, and in Scotland, Italy, Mexico, and Bhutan. In 2018 he was named Oregon’s 9th Poet Laureate by Governor Kate Brown for a two-year term. In a call to writers everywhere, he has said, “In our time is a great thing not yet done. It is the marriage of Woody Guthrie’s gusto and the Internet. It is the composing and wide sharing of songs, poems, blessings, manifestos, and stories by those with voice for those with need.”

Then There is This by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Then There is This

But it’s only a dog, she blathers,
and I am fingering a brick,

metaphorically,
aimed at her vacuous brain,

my Band-Aid of propriety
ripped clean off,

my storage unit
of fuck-you’s laid bare.

My office window frames
a stand of shagbark hickories,

statues of dark gods lopping
off the sky, their mawkish gold robes

fading to autumn’s wither, promising
nothing but bitterness and bite.

Maybe my mother was right
all along, maybe

I’ll never be satisfied
until I poke out someone’s eye.

*

Kari Gunter-Seymour (she/her) is the Poet Laureate of Ohio and the author of three award-winning collections of poetry, including Dirt Songs (EastOver Press 2024) winner of the IPPY Bronze, NYC Big Book and Feathered Quill Awards. She is the Executive Director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series Women Speak. Her work has been featured in a variety of journals and the American Book Review, Poem-a-Day, World Literature Today and The New York Times.

karigunterseymourpoet.com
I: karigunterseymour

Fortune Cookie by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Fortune Cookie

Who knows how long that crisp-wannabe
confection huddled in the side pocket
of my car door, or what karmic labyrinth

brought me to this piebald prophesy,
my delight at my find bordering
on ridiculous, a gaggle of words

shrugged together like a kiss for luck
and damn if there isn’t a QR code
hoping to further enhance my fascination.

Hope can be a tough sell when so many
are suffering in the world. It’s easier to notice
what’s wrong than what’s right.

Across the street my neighbor’s wife
is dying, so, too, democracy
according to the media.

A paper strip of quivering letterforms
predicting the future is a hoot, right?—
a shameless self-indulgence,

a distraction from sorrow, a frivolity
to share with a friend, a cheeky
infatuation of farcical futility.

*

Kari Gunter-Seymour (she/her) is the Poet Laureate of Ohio and the author of three award-winning collections of poetry, including Dirt Songs (EastOver Press 2024) winner of the IPPY Bronze, NYC Big Book and Feathered Quill Awards. She is the Executive Director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series Women Speak. Her work has been featured in a variety of journals and the American Book Review, Poem-a-Day, World Literature Today and The New York Times.

www.karigunterseymourpoet.com
I: karigunterseymour

ONE ART’s April Reading with Featured Poets: Kari Gunter-Seymour, Amit Majmudar, Chad Frame

ONE ART’s April Reading with Featured Poets: Kari Gunter-Seymour, Amit Majmudar, Chad Frame

Date: Sunday, April 6

Time: 2pm Eastern

Featured Poets: Kari Gunter-Seymour, Amit Majmudar, Chad Frame

Tickets: Free or Donation

~ About The Featured Poets ~

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio and the author of three award-winning collections of poetry, including Dirt Songs (EastOver Press 2024) and Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press 2022). She is the Executive Director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series Women Speak, and the host of “Spoken & Heard” a seasonal reading series featuring poets, writers and singer/songwriters from throughout the country. Her work has been featured in a number of periodicals and journals including the American Book Review, Poem-a-Day, World Literature Today and The New York Times. Find her at www.karigunterseymourpoet.com.

*

Amit Majmudar is a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. He works as a diagnostic nuclear radiologist in Westerville, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and three children. Recent books include Twin A: A Memoir (Slant Books, 2023), The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (Acre Books, 2024), the hybrid work Three Metamorphoses (Orison Books, 2025), and the poetry collection Things my Grandmother Said (Knopf, 2026). More information at www.amitmajmudar.com

*

Chad Frame is the author of three books of poetry: Little Black Book, Cryptid, and Smoking Shelter. He is the Director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program, a Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, a founding member of the No River Twice poetry/improv performance troupe, and the founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival. His work appears in Rattle, Strange Horizons, Pedestal, Barrelhouse, Rust+Moth, on iTunes from the Library of Congress, and is archived on the moon with The Lunar Codex.

ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2024

ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2024

  1. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
  2. Betsy Mars
  3. Donna Hilbert
  4. Abby E. Murray
  5. Robbi Nester
  6. Julie Weiss
  7. john compton
  8. Tina Barry
  9. Timothy Green
  10. Kim Addonizio
  11. Andrea Potos
  12. Kari Gunter-Seymour
  13. Callie Little
  14. Alison Luterman
  15. Robin Wright
  16. Sally Nacker
  17. Trish Hopkinson
  18. Christina Kallery
  19. Vicki Boyd
  20. Terri Kirby Erickson
  21. Susan Vespoli
  22. Bonnie Proudfoot
  23. Scott Ferry & Leilani Ferry
  24. Martha Silano
  25. Joan Mazza

Note: Some poets were published multiple times in ONE ART in 2024. Links are to each poet’s most-read poem(s) of the year.

Alban Arthan by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Alban Arthan

There are magics to behold
in the dark, on winter’s longest night,
if we’ve the verve to herald them.
I huddle, umbrellaed
beneath a thick-pinioned stand
of pitlolly pine, bundled in Carhartt,
wool cap tugged low.

The temperature dips as twilight ebbs.
Breathy winds set the tone—
a confluence of feminine whispers,
then rain, dainty droplets
swelling into two/three beats—
a council of charcoal-faced warriors
crouching their drums.

A junco lands slapdash, barely
two feet from mine, head swiveling
side to side, breastplate heaving.
Our histories balance precariously
in the seeing. I hold
still as stone until he’s flown,
invoke traveling mercies.

Somewhere south a coyote
yips, his canticle laced
in arctic threads. I picture him
pacing under ice-coated oaks,
nose in the air, divining his options.

Without pomp or pageantry,
snow tiptoes in,
turns down the sound,
piles up gestures,
conjures tales only told in the cold.

Stiff-legged, I wriggle from my burrow,
cup tiny vestiges in mittened hands,
swoon at the moon’s silvery rise
as I slow-foot homeward,
the landscape a cauldron
of glitter, flake and revenants.

*

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio. Her current poetry collections include Dirt Songs (EastOver Press 2024), winner of the StoryTrade Award and POTY Award; Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner of the Legacy Book Award and Best Book Award. She is the executive director and editor of the Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak anthology series. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily, World Literature Today, American Book Review, The New York Times and Poem-a-Day.

ONE ART’s 2025 Nominations for The Pushcart Prize

ONE ART’s 2025 Nominations for The Pushcart Prize

Kari Gunter-Seymour – A History of Fireworks

Ronda Piszk Broatch – The Only Dress You’ll Ever Need

Shawn Aveningo-Sanders – The Flyer

Penelope Moffet – Pirates

Olga Livshin – Blowout

T. R. Poulson – Treasure

*

Learn more about The Pushcart Prize.

A History of Fireworks by Kari Gunter-Seymour

A History of Fireworks

It’s July 1st. Whose idea it was to wait
I can’t remember, but me, my son
and two granddaughters, nine and ten,
are at the fireworks warehouse,
along with scads of other pyromaniacs,
sorting out scenarios for night sky panoramas,
shelves heaped to the ceiling with firepower.

I do my best to maneuver the cart. My son
considers tube launchers, skyrockets, mortars.
A particularly hearty woman standing her ground
near the Roman candles cackles,
these flaming swords are the bomb,
it’s my third trip back, my kids love’em.

Flaming swords? I envision “Star Wars”
or “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,”
ER visits, burn salve at best, but when I mention
what I overheard, my son says, Awesome!

I pick up a petite pink sword, offer it
to my sweet baby girls.
The first says, I want that black sword.
The second looks up at the top shelf, stacked
to the hilt with Thor’s hammer look-alikes,
says, I want one of those conk busters.

Night of, dusk closing in,
the sword tip is lit, sparks fly—
a fountain of reds, greens and golds.
My grandgirl lunges and parries, the granddog
darts in/out of spark showers, barks,
oohs and ahhs abound—applause, applause.
Then comes the hammer,
held high and fierce.
For a few magnificent seconds
sparks fly, the dog dances,
then silence and a wee sputtering flame.

We scratch our heads, grumble,
give in to lost cause.
But my warrior girl persists,
Mjölnir aloft, double gripped,
feet planted firm and wide,
shouts her warrior oath—
then all hell breaks loose.

Flames shoot, whistles whine,
colorful spheres escape containment.
We clap and hoot, amazed at the splendor,
each of us sporting bits of confetti and soot,
the expressions on our faces hilarious,
my granddaughter’s the best face of all,
agog in the wonder of her power.

*

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio. Her current poetry collections include Dirt Songs (EastOver Press 2024) Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner of the Legacy Book Award and Best Book Award. She is the executive director and editor of the Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak anthology series. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily, World Literature Today, American Book Review, The New York Times and Poem-a-Day.

Five Poems by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Amesville Girls

sip Squirt soda from lime green
returnable glass bottles pulled ice cold from
the chest cooler at Kasler’s corner grocery,
retrieve the dime, stuff it in the jukebox
at Fanny’s Family Diner, dance

The Bus Stop or The Sprinkler
to AC/DC, say words like warsh
and fixin’ to go, spit watermelon seeds
good as the boys, swim naked in the crick,

sneak out to sleep in the graveyard
to be closer to their grannies,
ink ballpoint tattoos on each other’s biceps,
wear fruit-flavored lip gloss to softball practice,

dream Guns N’ Roses’ tour bus
stops for lunch at the diner
and Slash or Duff McKagan
kiss their cherry mouths, finger
their buttons, white-knight them away.

*

Where We Come from Can Break Us

She was curious, always questions
from that one, a nine-year-old
going on twenty, sneaking
the backwoods to my porch swing,
earless to her mama’s played-out rebukes.

I was a new mother, alone
more than was fit.
The baby loved her singing
and she would brush my hair
for hours, jawing tales
about her made up life.

I often think of her hangdog
eyes and heavy lashes,
hope she was able to save herself
from that broke down place.
Who’m I trying to kid?

*

How Could a Woman

He could not climb in the driver’s
seat without lighting up a joint.
There I’d be, juggling bunting, bottle,
binky, strapping the baby in his car seat,
while my husband sat, rolling a fat one,
lip-syncing whatever was blasting
from the radio, sealing the deal
with nimble finger work,
a slick slip of the tongue.
He would key the ignition, flip open
a lighter, take a long slow toke,
cough hard enough to crack a rib,
ease into gear. What soured me most
was how pleased he was with himself,
that and the fact I stuck with him
for close on two years.

*

True Grit

Sweet Child O’Mine
spun throaty on the boombox,
only CD I owned. The baby
squatted in his second-hand
jolly jumper, clipped at the top
of the door frame—bouncing
as if the floor was a trampoline,
he an Olympic trainer.

I took the afternoon off work
to have my wisdom teeth pulled,
groggy from the laughing gas,
ticked off at my spouse,
who’d obviously been rolling joints,
leaving behind a whole mess
of seeds and stems, brushed
from coffee table to shoddy carpet.

Behind on the electric bill,
car tires bald, the twit once
hocked my high school class ring
to buy an ounce of pot.

I admit it. I allowed myself
to be diminished way too long.
I might never have culled my courage
had it not been for the baby,
the way he carefully cupped my jaw
as I lifted him from the jumper.
Love is or it ain’t.

*

Hanky-Panky Poker

We women dressed as if headed
to the French Riviera—frilly skirts,
teased-up hairdos, shiny lip gloss.
The men wore flannel shirts,
stunk of sour mash and tobacco.

It got intense. Five Card Draw,
nickel ante, quarter limit—
Texas Hold’em if we drank tequila shots.
There were some shining moments
before the whole shebang went briny.

Sarah Sipple called a nature break,
gone too long to the facilities
and Danny Munford who’d stepped outside
to do the same, got caught bare-assed,
Levi’s around his ankles, rutting Sarah
like some randied white tail buck.

All things considered, we switched
to Euchre, less hard liquor,
more chips and dip.
Danny Munford went tail-ass-tits to the wind.
Phil Sipple got hisself a new partner.

*

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio. Her poetry collections include Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022) and A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila Na Gig Editions, 2020), winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily, Cultural Daily, World Literature Today, the New York Times and Poets.org. A ninth generation Appalachian, she is the editor of I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices, funded by the Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Women of Appalachia Project’s anthology series, Women Speak. Gunter-Seymour is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University; the founder, curator, and host of Spoken & Heard, a seasonal performance series featuring poets, writers, and musicians from across the country; an artist in residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts and a 2022 Pillar of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio.

www.karigunterseymourpoet.com
@KGunterSeymour

Two Poems by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Because Autumn Always Clotheslines Me

Already the sumac—ripened,
rusty red leaves, stark among the greens.
Not yet, I say. I say it every August,
though leafy lime katydids warn me,
chameleoned against the Japanese maples,
suddenly out-singing even the cicadas.
Stink bugs feast in the garden, a melancholy
thistle bends to a rumor of breeze.

*

Power Out on the Mountain

I started out this day elbowing
my grandmother’s forget-me-not
teacup off the counter beside the sink.
Sobbed as I swept a million jagged
memories, scattered across the kitchen floor.

Now my feet up, a glass of sweet tea,
I watch birds at the feeder.
A quarrel of house sparrows peck
at the smalls, gorge themselves on seed,
as if they deserve to.

I once told my grandmother a rich man
hurt me. Her bent head told me
to keep that story to myself.
I revisit what it means to be ruined
over and over in my sleep, imagine ways
to dismember him, as if that might help
glue my own broken pieces back together.

*

Kari Gunter-Seymour’s poetry collections include A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen, winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award and Serving. Her poems appear in numerous journals and publications including Poem-A-Day, Verse Daily, Rattle, World Literature Today, The NY Times, and on her website: www.karigunterseymourpoet.com. A ninth generation Appalachian, she is the founder/executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project (WOAP) and editor of the WOAP anthology series, Women Speak. She is a recipient of a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and Poet Laureate of Ohio.

Five Poems by Kari Gunter-Seymour

BONE THIN

Sunday morning, the alarm set
for dawn, I gargle lemon water
to loosen phlegm, open vocal cords.
Mother postured at the piano, paces me
up and down the major scales,
Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?

I dress in a starched white blouse,
an A-line skirt hemmed precisely
below the knee. Mother stands behind me
in the mirror– cat eye glasses, Pentecostal bun
– hot-curls my ragged mane into
a semblance of respectable.

Later, in the choir loft, mother leans,
her coffee breath all over me,
whispers loud enough
for the soprano section to hear,
You’re too pretty to be so fat.

*

BECAUSE COAL

The last stars arc, dim the sash.
Wails the pitch of a coalmine’s siren
quiver my temporal bone, a song to dig a hole.
My grandfathers, coal-caked, muscle
and blood, yoked to Peabody scrip,

sinking shaft or pit, railroad cars tippled,
cinder and soot smutting miles of track,
valley fills steeped in acid spoil,
one hundred years of forest sheared.

Pained as I am to reflect, my great-greats,
pigeon-toed, gap-mouthed, pondering
how the hard-working find themselves
both proud and begging, held fast,
like a flag that never waves.

Who hasn’t rationalized themselves
a noble son or daughter, their life tightly
squeezed between two fists?

Tonight, roaming the ether,
I visit their graves, blush-pink peonies
to decorate each stone. Saying nothing,
I write, one finger in dust,
Fire in our hearts, fire in our souls,
forever together, “down in the hole”

*

TENNESSEE HOMELAND

Daddy didn’t like watermelon,
he loved cantaloupe, “musk-melon”
our family called it. He would
cut one in half, scape the seeds,
add a shake of salt inside the cavity, feast.

Daddy and his people grew up
in Putnam County, bare foot, feral.
He declared cantaloupes grown
along the East Fork Obey River,
where the air sweats and melons
swell like teats on a bluetick,
the best on earth.

Every year, late July, our family
made the pilgrimage. He’d sniff,
and thump, roll them over,
looking for blanched spots
on their netted rinds, evidence
of ripening in the field.
Like all best things, they didn’t last long.

Come mid-summer, I’ll make my way
to Putnam County. In spirit, my Daddy
will ride shotgun, shirt sleeves rolled,
collar open, puffing a Parliament Menthol
as I speed down old Highway 53, mouth watering,
the bottomlands calling me home.

*

HARD TRUTH

Lakeside, crickets and stars,
my host said it was a Loon,
but the southeastern Ohio in me
heard coyote, the long slow wail
that comes from generations of hard luck,
skin sagging loose from the rib.

Considered the white trash of the four-footed,
you probably don’t know that tax dollars paid
fifty bucks a head to kill sixty-eight thousand
coyotes in 2019, or that forty-six percent
of Appalachian school-aged children
experienced food insecurity the same year.

Revered as first teacher by the Indigenous,
they say it was Coyote in the dark land of mists,
who called insects, birds and animals to council,
to decide if First Man and First Woman
should pass into the Third World.

Tonight, moon full, air brusque,
those forsaken dream of full bellies.
Loon flaps iridescent wings,
rears her dagger-like bill,
howls Coyote’s death song.

*

THE SOFTENING

The conversation began
with a false step, everything
that followed was a downward
plunge, the silence left
in the middle of a sentence.

Said she felt like she was –
what was the word?
Only to realize it was one
of the first she’d learned,
one of her earliest memories.

After that, to know
it could happen again,
did happen, everything transient,
leaving her like her child self,
struggling to fill the gap.

Elsewhere, people wake,
make coffee, listen to the news.
She is focused on the process
of loss, dropping dead words
into private conversations.

As if somewhere in the mix,
she might find an end
to the mortification,
or just one day the voice
inside her head does not judge.

*

Kari Gunter-Seymour’s poetry collections include A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen, winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award and Serving, runner up, Yellow Chair Review Chapbook Award. Her poems appear in numerous journals and publications including Verse Daily, Rattle, Lascaux Review, The NY Times, and on her website: www.karigunterseymourpoet.com. A ninth generation Appalachian, she is the founder/executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project (WOAP) (www.womenofappalachia.com) and editor of the WOAP anthology series, Women Speak. She is a recipient of a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and Poet Laureate of Ohio.