RECIPIENT OF THE 2023 SMALL ORANGE EMERGING WOMAN POET HONOR

Self-Portrait as the Foothills of Appalachia

I began as the foot of a hiking trail,

I’m the twisty detail that draws you in.

Ignore all the mile markers, just wave at Harleys

and farm departers. I am the woody

chapel up on Mount Yonah, mosquito

ear-buzz, mountain persona, redbud mouth

and magnolia hands play and sing old time hymns.

I’m the lantern hanging from the river birch,

the Ranger who courts a copperhead

with the wily ways of the river perch.

At dusk I’m howling - moon dates and weather

breaks, climate change or not, but I’ll never give

away what the starlight caught.

Father was a Slippery Elm, his father Devil’s Walkingstick.

Mother flowered Dogwoods, bathed in Hickory Bitternut.

Sweetgum colored in her veins, made her gracious,

made her flame. Mama said I was marked so deep,

I’m listen first and always believe,

with a skeptic heart.

I’m covered dish Sunday sermon delight,

I’m kissing you to sleep at night.

When you miss me, travel through the wetlands,

duck under cliffs and the beech tree stand.

Walk past the dead hickory ache

and settle in ferns on the river bank.

My Father Told Us Dress Pretty

He’d say, Change your clothes, don’t embarrass me.

Then he’d grin and say, I love you anyway

even when you’re fat. He’s not a bully. Just looking out for us.

Like Big Brother he liked his women small. Shame like an anchor.

When he taught me how to sail, I couldn’t stop capsizing.

He laughed at me, caught in sudden storms, lightning on the lake.

Once it happened at night (I thought death was imminent), but he showed me

constellations from the watery cocoon we floated in, then told me how he nearly

died, small boy at the bottom of a well. His parents cried on the stairs, tears

for depression money, so he was down there shivering a long time,

remembered the inky dark, nothing like our night stories. His sailboats sprang

leaks in crescent moons, makeshift repairs backlit by dark sky.

Are patched up vessels all that women can expect?

My family was like all middle-class families. Secrets shrouded in night,

infinite masks to choose from. Our legacy was celestial

navigation, which is not protection, but practice

at how the dark can save us.

Kristy Snedden is a trauma psychotherapist who began writing in 2020 at age 63. Her work has been published in various on-line and print journals and anthologies and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She spends her free time hiking in the mountains near her home in northeast Georgia or hanging out with her husband listening to their dogs tell tall tales.