As a kitten

 she looked like a hyiena,

a soft, playful, unreal

hyiena, who would

eat my hair whenever

I held her

or if I bent over.

Poor eyesight

bizarre sense

of feline humor

 a tortoise shell

of color patches

she growls at stuffed dogs

and swats at her shadow

my little Pistol.

Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Contest

Thank you, Casey Shay Press and thank you, Jay Parini.

I am absolutely thrilled, very humbled and honored to have received notification that I’ve won the Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Contest held by Casey Shay Press in Austin, Texas. This means so much to me as much of my poetry goes to raise awareness about mountain top removal and also, because I feel like I’m contributing something positive to the lives of my fellow Appalachians, in particular, women.

When I was a kid we had two books in our house that I can remember. One of them was the Bible that Momma kept up on a shelf and the other was an old high school literature book that she kept in the kitchen closet above the deep freezer. I asked permission to see the book one day and Momma got it down for me. I turned through its yellow pages until I came to a poem entitled ”Annabellee” by Edgar Alan Poe. I was maybe nine. I read it and reread it. I told Momma that it was I loved that poem.  That poem was a song in my heart and it made me want to sing. So, I starting writing poems. I wrote them on scraps of paper, on the insides of Little Debbie Cake boxes, on the bottoms of cardboard boxes, on rocks, on Granny‘s squash and as I got older, on paper plates and napkins, on evelopes and then I tucked them away in drawers and behind mirrors. I feared that someone would find these bits of my heart and laugh at them. I wasn’t sure my psyche could handle that. I loved poetry, but I didn’t know if it would love me back.

Then one day in 2003, I used a pen name and posted a poem on a writer’s website. I received an email from the editor a small online  Canadian e-zine, asking me if  he could publish my poem. I said yes but used a fake name. I was still terrified of the internet and of people laughing at my poetry. I continued to write poems under the pen name and I continued to get solicitations from small online ezines. Then I got brave enough to submit to magazines and finally to use my real name. The next thing I knew I was sitting in a writers workshop along side George Ella Lyons and Kate Long, with Anne  Shelby and Sherry Chandler, Charlie Hughes, Leetha Kendrick and Gurney Norman. I was sitting in a room with some of the best poets I knew and I was humbled by that experience. Then I started Raven’s Shadow and joined some online poetry groups [just a couple]. I was writing poetry and getting emails and private messages from people who said my words had touched them.

…from Old Seventy Creek Press, I Listened, Momma.

Old Seventy Creek Press is a publisher, specializing in Appalachian literature.

This makes me so excited.

It’s strange that we live in an age where we are all “connected” via the internet, i-phones, and a host of other technologies, yet people are constantly telling me how alone they feel, how “disconnected” they feel. Information is always at our fingertips. People tweet about everything from hang nails to hangings, but rather than giving us a feeling of closeness and depth, we are left feeling shallow and  insignificant, lost in a multitude of voices shouting to be heard.

So why do people feel so alone in an age when we are never alone? I have only my opinion, for whatever that’s worth, to offer. I believe it is due to several reasons, one of them being that Western society lacks a sense of ‘community’ and a sense that comes from being ‘a part of a people’, a tribe, a clan. It is a society that is often focused on self-absorption and idolization.  For all of our tweeting and facebooking and i-phones and smart phones and laptops, we still do not honestly communicate. We don’t touch each other where it really counts, in our spirits.  We do not “life touch”. We may elicit emotional outbursts and responses, but so does Jerry Springer! It’s not the same thing.

Life-touching takes time. It takes patience. It takes a willingness to give of ourselves, asking nothing in return. Life-touching is what happens when a mom spends the afternoon dipping tadpoles out of a pond and helping her children construct an environment. It’s what happens when a man takes a day off work and teaches his son to bait a fish hook. If you see a family making tamales together, and telling stories while they work, you’re seeing life-touching in action. Life-touching involves grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.Americahas become a land of nuclear families and as a result, it’s become a land of lonely and disconnected people who lack a clear identity and personal relations. To be disconnected from our ancestors is to be lost in a sea of nameless faces. I know of people who can’t even tell you the names of their grandparents, much less tell you the stories of their families. All they have is what has been gained in one generation and when that generation is gone, there will be little or no legacy to pass on and thus, there will be a new generation of disconnected people. Disconnection leads to psychological breakdown, a host of abnormal social behaviors, as well as an absence of responsibility, morality, respect, honesty and trust.

It’s never too late to start life-touching. We are not just here for ourselves. We do not live unto ourselves and we do not die unto ourselves. Whatever we do affects someone else. We are constantly either drawing someone closer and helping them feel connected or else we are reinforcing the predominant attitude of mechanical society that makes us feel like we are insignificant. The world is filled with cynical and critical people, with people who belittle and intimidate, with violent people and rude people, with arrogant people and snooty people. I’m not here to be one of those, because I don’t think this world needs anymore of them. I want to be a life-toucher, a hope-bringer. I want to leave behind a legacy of heritage and love, the greatest force on earth.

one that went with my book,

one that was whimsical,

but I can’t help but think

of how we live

in this Shadow Land

where Raven flew over

all those long days ago,

touching all temporal things

with his shadow.

So I return

to the original name

so long as I dwell

in beneath the sun.

v gi li si

v gi tsi

a ni ge ya da na i

tsa la gi a ni ge ya

September,

my dear friend,

keeper of balance,

you always move faster

than other moons

or so it seems to me.

Maybe it is because

I am attached to you

and wish you to visit longer

each year. You share your beauty

goldenrods, iron weeds, black-eyed susans,

you who are of the nut gathering moon

I feel your anxiousness in the wind

and I know you are not one to sit

for long, so you must run,

swift like the deer.