by Marianne Kunkel

Garlicky smoke plumes from our oven the afternoon
I come home to grab a meringue pie
and leave again, this time to a Christmas party.
I dart upstairs to warn you your baking potatoes, hastily wrapped in foil
and leaking oil, might burn the house down. But you’re deep in a Zoom call—
so many coworkers your monitor resembles graph paper—
and your locked jaw, stiff back,
signal interruptions aren’t welcome. I miss the one-thoughtness
of childhood: I wanted to drink warm rain
so I did, eyes shut. Petted an alley cat. Made the new kid in suspenders
my BFF. Grown, I tell myself your potatoes won’t start a grease fire,
not to ruin your late lunch with worry.
Driving off, I check my rear-view mirror for flames crowning our house;
could there be a worse thought? The small relief you’d be to blame, not me.
Or, in bed that night, shame I didn’t rewrap your potatoes.
Slip you a note.

_________________________________________________________

Marianne Kunkel is the author of Hillary, Made Up (Stephen F. Austin State UP) and The Laughing Game (Finishing Line Press), two anthologies, and many poems, including one in Best American Poetry 2025. She is Associate Professor of English at Johnson County Community College and Co-editor of Kansas City Review. She holds an MFA in poetry from University of Florida and Ph.D. in English from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she was Prairie Schooner managing editor.

by Marianne Kunkel

After Annie Leibovitz’s side-by-side portraits of Susan McNamara, 1995


You haven’t changed, though change is what you do.
Tank top, wire glasses, pixie cut by day;
at night you wear a spider-crown of jewels.

You Vegas showgirl, I first gazed at you
at age 12. Now 40, I absorb your gaze.
You haven’t changed, though change is what you do.

At left, in black and white, thin lips askew,
you smirk—your makeup-less face on display.
At right, you wear a golden crown of jewels

with 18 spikes. This helmet locks your hairdo
in place, chestnut extensions to your waist.
You haven’t changed, though change is what you do

for hours—affix shell-shaped bikini with glue,
paint eyelids ombre mauve, iron silk cape,
hoist up that 25-pound crown of jewels.

At 12, I found your scarlet pout aloof;
now, my own lips stained, I see a power play.
I haven’t changed, though change is what I do—
students know me by my spider-crown of jewels.

____________________________________________________________