Kristy Snedden
Kristy Snedden has been a trauma psychotherapist for forty-plus years. She began writing poetry in June 2020. Her poem, “Dementia,” was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 90th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in various journals and anthologies, including Snapdragon, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Examined Life Journal, Open Minds Quarterly, Pensive, and Door Is A Jar. She currently serves as the Book Review Editor for Anti-Heroin Chic. In her free time, she can be found hiking in the Appalachian Mountains near her home in Georgia or hanging out with her husband listening to their dogs tell tall tales. You can follow her on Instagram @kristy_snedden_poetry.
The following work is Copyright © 2023, and owned by Kristy Snedden and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
My neighbor’s calf gazing into my eyes
held me just outside the woven wire fence. Enraptured at dusk, I fell and found musicians, already tuned up. The opening notes spilled over the stage. Three flutes. A drumbeat from shadows in the back. I was shaken by the solid bass of cellos, strolled through the staircase of violins. The conductor included me with her baton as I swayed behind the French horn dressed in my grandmother’s finest gown, old and a little wrinkled.
Such harmony and such tenderness. I rolled in the hay backstage, created a bed of straw. Mother’s lowing cradled us in the meadow, stars sailed into the sky above.
An angel sent by Lyra landed with a delicate thump beside me. She folded her wings and encouraged me in my quest to be music.
The tattered edges of my gown glowed. Each blink of the eye followed by the sweep of lash built a bridge of notes that buttressed me until I rested on the melody, concerto over the field.
Scott Thomas Outlar
Scott Thomas Outlar is originally from Atlanta, Georgia. He now lives and writes in Frederick, Maryland. He is the author of seven books. His work has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He guest-edited the Hope Anthology of Poetry from CultureCult Press as well as the 2019-2023 Western Voices editions of Setu Mag. He has been a weekly contributor at Dissident Voice for the past eight and a half years. Selections of his poetry have been translated into Afrikaans, Albanian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Cherokee, Dutch, French, Hindi, Italian, Kurdish, Malayalam, Persian, Serbian, and Spanish. More about Outlar’s work can be found at 17Numa.com.
The following work is Copyright © 2023, and owned by Scott Outlar and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
If Only in Dreams
My father
of infinite consciousness
passed away from this world
but eternal in the God state of transcendence
appeared to me in a perfect form
of amplified unification
and argued the point to my face
that you may shed your skin
and seem to live several lives
while roaming with a suit of flesh
but where he came from
and has returned
there is only one
energetic point
of truth
that pulses
forever
and with that encounter signed
sealed and delivered
I remember
that the great abyss of fear
is also the source
where heaven
expands
so I’ll be damned
if I don’t dance
through every season
while enjoying my time
served on earth
because I know it’s beautiful on the other side
but there’s still something about the sun
that shines an awfully special song
of light here during the tribulation
