kim d. hunter




time grew


back when time grew on trees and the fruit of knowledge was a snake’s mouth away, i tried to turn on the television in the middle of day, night when no one was watching, so the images would not repeat my mistakes as i changed the channel in wreckless hope


which is strange for a place where everything is for sale, especially our time, still, i went down to the sea in search of moments without price tags, waves roared into the skull cave carved out by the surrogate owners of everything


can you help me get this hook outta my mouth, a dolphin in a sharkskin suit asked me

i have a job interview, prison audition, murder trial, circus shooting, she said, and who knows what will happen if i’m late, if i’m on time, if i show up


i was about to forge excuses required by the hook manufacturer to heal the wound when her family swam up to us


you’re not a domestic, they admonished with their permanent smiles, only humans believe in destiny and sales receipts as proof that something happened, we love you for your instincts, let’s cauterize the wound without fire or documents, there are oceans of sun and storm ahead


swimming away from me, they shouted, count the body you’re in, as i searched in vain for my likeness





what i hate about love


it shows up more on screen than in flesh, dollar store laxatives in theatrical popcorn give the illusion of emptiness that can only be filled with multiverse computer demons swallowing their own tails in stereo on screens that claim to be your mother, father, the lost dog you never had


capsule movie reviews tattooed on digital retinas insist it was a communal experience alone in darkness of the public private home entertainment catacomb, but omit the sequels and prequels of temporary lobotomy


if only you had taken the advice of your bartender who used to be a psychiatrist before she was a bookie who earned enough to pay the losers and after they’d had a few drinks, she’d school them in statistics until they swore off betting and organized their neighbors into cadres out in the open away from the glare of doom scroll and virtual virality


her purple-haired students, her multi-colored loved ones, her multi-gendered comrades swarm the headquarters, cross the moat, occupy the temple of moneylenders where you just got a job training people to be trained, but maybe, in the spit and sweat of the crowd that knows it is a hydra, an organism, there is a chance for something more glorious and ignobly human than anyone has ever feared





the come and go lounge


two skeletons complete with nervous nerves and organic organs emerge from outside the come and go lounge near the crossroads, puzzled and happy to speak through their bones before they lay down in the hope of flesh yet to be and those that led them to this place, named and renamed until painted layers peel with a kind of music in the marrow, soundtrack to the question


what ever happened on the cave wall, under the glow of the fireworks turned rocket, on the corpse strewn field of weapons as the model for hell, in towers of towers for towers’ sake, a worrisome parade of occurrences and stuff as we look for ourselves in other skeletons across the way


look for that common currency, love with no value but love, with organs failed or missing, limbs and function erased in time on the corner of the mountain and the vacant lot, intersection of alley and swollen river, where forest overgrows the brand-new parking structure, we stop for lunch to call and respond


do you come here often


only to empty my soul and make way for the future




Based in Detroit, where he works for social justice groups in Michigan, kim d. hunter is a poet and prose writer. He is the author of a collection of short stories, The Official Report on Human Activity (Wayne State University, 2018), and two books of poetry: edge of the time zone (White Print Inc., 2009) and borne on slow knives (Past Tents, 2001). He co-directed the Woodward Line Poetry Series for thirteen years and holds a 2012 Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship.








Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market neighborhood in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.