{"id":14217,"date":"2026-02-15T19:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T19:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=14217"},"modified":"2026-02-18T19:09:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T19:09:16","slug":"the-palimpsest-gunilla-theander-kester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=14217","title":{"rendered":"The PALIMPSEST &#8211; Gunilla Theander Kester"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My mother tongue is a deceptive septic tank.<br \/>\nIt stinks but also smells at times of honeysuckle.<br \/>\nFills treachery with a sudden flight of angels<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">9<\/span><br \/>\nIt curses and cries and breaks down on the road<br \/>\nlike my grandpa\u2019s old green Mercedes. Drops of gas<br \/>\nfilters through it like raindrops leaving oil and mud.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nA mess to clean or bury it has footprints on the side<br \/>\nshowing everyone where to cross and how to count<br \/>\nthe structure of colors and cracks in every distant corner<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nthe hopes, the drains, the longing of stranded balconies.<br \/>\nAnd under it, the one climbing rocks for the view<br \/>\nwho likes making other people use its power tools.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nBelow, below, the enemy language where the Dativ<br \/>\nwhips the Akkusativ, their identities live to confuse<br \/>\nforeigners and students, live for orders and graves.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nLetters parched and dry, pressed between the pages<br \/>\nof old books and envelopes, lists stuck in dusty drawers<br \/>\nleft under an old flower pot. Debts unpaid.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">9<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nSwedish-born Gunilla Theander Kester is an award-winning poet and the author of If I Were More Like Myself (The Writer&#8217;s Den, 2015). Her two poetry chapbooks: <em>Mysteries I-XXIII<\/em> (2011) and <em>Time of Sand and Teeth<\/em> (2009) were published by Finishing Line Press. She was co-editor with Gary Earl Ross of <em>The Still Empty Chair: More Writings Inspired by Flight 3407<\/em> (2011) and <em>The Empty Chair: Love and Loss in the Wake of Flight 3407<\/em> (2010). Dr. Kester has published many poems in Swedish anthologies and magazines, including <em>Bonniers Litter\u00e4ra Magasin<\/em>. Her work has or will be published in <em>On the Seawall, Cider Press, The American Journal of Poetry, Pendemics,<\/em> and <em>Atlanta Review<\/em>. She lives near Buffalo, NY where she teaches classical guitar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mother tongue is a deceptive septic tank. It stinks but also smells at times of honeysuckle. Fills treachery with a sudden flight of angels 9 It curses and cries and breaks down on the road like my grandpa\u2019s old green Mercedes. Drops of gas filters through it like raindrops leaving oil and mud. &nbsp; [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[490],"class_list":["post-14217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-vanite-by-edvaert-collier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14217"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14223,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14217\/revisions\/14223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}