Poetry by Lacy Snapp, Wayne Caldwell, Jerry Buchanan, David Winship, Jordan Hensley, Kevin Brown, & Sue Weaver Dunlap

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Hello again, my friends, this is Jesse Graves and I have resumed my seat at the Appalachian Places Poet’s Table. I am delighted to be back with you, and I hope you will join me for some midwinter treats. First, let me begin by thanking my colleague Lacy Snapp for serving so well as Guest Poetry Editor this past year while I worked on other projects, and let me also announce that Lacy will be joining me from here forward as Poetry Co-Editors! Lacy did such an amazing job that the whole staff agreed that we couldn’t let them go, and I am especially grateful that they will stay aboard. By way of re-introducing Lacy to you all as both a poet and an editor, and in the spirit of our winter season, I have asked to publish their poem, “Scope of the Mistletoe.” This poem also includes our first audio recording of a poet reading their poem, a feature we hope to continue in future installments. I am delighted that the old rascal Posey Green has been speaking through Wayne Caldwell again, and readers of Wayne’s book Woodsmoke will be glad that he has shared some of these new poems with us. We follow Posey with a suite of poems from Jerry Buchanan, David Winship, Jordan Hensley, and Kevin Brown that examine several distinct intersections of language and nature, history and the cycles of time. We close this installment with a gathering of new poems from Sue Weaver Dunlap of Walland, Tennessee. My old poetry guru, the late Arthur Smith, said of Mary Oliver that she was one of our best noticers, that she saw things other poets missed. “Sister Sue” is surely such a noticer, and one of the finest recorders of life in our part of the world. Here’s hoping for a happy and healthy 2026 for you all, and for a grand year of poetry.

                                                                                 Jesse Graves

Co-Editor, Poetry

Lacy Snapp: 'Scope of the Mistletoe'

Lacy Snapp is a poet, professor, and woodworking artist in East Tennessee where they plan university and community-based literary events, and run their small business, Luna’s Woodcraft. In 2025, they were awarded the inaugural Tammy “Tambone” Clemons Visionary Award from the Appalachian Studies Association. Their first chapbook, Shadows on Wood, was published in 2021 (Finishing Line Press). Their poetry, nonfiction, interviews, and book reviews appear in many journals, including About Place, Salvation South, Hunger Mountain Review, and is forthcoming from Cutleaf Journal.

Scope of the Mistletoe

To hear the poem read by the author, click the image to the right.

The poet Kim Stafford says 

he ducks down beneath

spider webs 

suspended across hiking trails

because it means no one 

has traveled the path

before him, and he won’t be

the one to break 

the illusion of being alone 

without really being 

alone. We, too, pace ourselves 

during the careful transcendence 

from parked car to deep 

into the thicket,

but it is because 

we no longer look ahead

but upward as our feet crunch

the stale dead 

leaves of winter, we the clumsy 

human travelers

in the forest silenced

from the cold. We search

for evergreen clusters in the upper

branches, parasitic 

planets of the wood 

we hope to detach with shotgun fire

so we might bundle them 

with ribbon, leave them

on doorsteps as totems

of our affection.

This year we hunt

just days before the winter solstice

starts shifting away from the sustained

dark nights. We sense

the subterranean shadowed ritual

which honors the violent

slaying of the holly king, axis

finally pivoting towards 

the return of spring,

of shared body heat, my winter

-numbed limbs remembering

what is dormant will soon 

return, just as the crocus

blooms hibernate

until the ground’s first thawing. 

For now, we look forward

for the bark of the sycamore,

the oak, glance upwards

for the knotty limbs 

of the hierophant blackgum. 

We scour for golden bough 

beacons, deep kiss of emerald 

along the skyline, opal-berried 

eyes in the poisonous dozens. 

Yule fruit in sight, we plant

our feet, control our slow

wink as we aim for something

we see clearly but dare not

to name until our casings

are all but spent. 

Wayne Caldwell: 'Fall's A'Coming'; 'Bobwhite'; 'Squinch Owl'; 'Thanks, Brother'

Wayne Caldwell is the author of three novels, Cataloochee, Requiem by Fire, and Shadow Family, and two books of poetry, Woodsmoke and River Road. He won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association, and the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Fall’s A’Coming

You can always tell when fall’s a’coming.

Night music? July’s just jarflies, but in August

Katydids join, and old fall’s around the corner.

Watch the dogwoods. During dog days they make

Green berries. As they red up, fall comes too.

But them little spiders that shoot a strand of web

From one limb to another just at forehead height?

It’s August, and I just pulled a little piece

Of spider silk from what thin hair I got.

So I know, for a fact — fall’s a’coming.

Bobwhite

Sometimes I get the glooms because

We’ve lost so many things —

Wild parakeets, ivorybills, passenger pigeons —

Or near about lost — hemlocks, chestnuts, elms.

Then there’s things you didn’t see decades ago —

Turkeys tying up traffic in town,

Enough deer to make a fancy yard a breakfast.

They say flights of pelicans glide beside the beach,

They’re bringing back red wolves too.

The other morning I heard a bobwhite whistle.

A sound I hadn’t heard in forty years. Made me smile.

Ain’t much — but I’ll take any little old thing

That says things might could — one day — be okay.

Squinch Owl

Papa used to say a squinch owl could see death.

Hear one dusky dark, somebody close is fixing to die.

Mama said you couldn't go by that like as not

They just predicted rain. I've heard them plenty,

But only seen one once. We had this peckerwood hole

High up a sourwood by the south pasture. One day

Walking by, I stopped. That hole was gone. Backed up,

Saw a square hole full of little bitty owl

The same pattern as tree bark, golden eyes

Squinched up like it hated what it saw.

Papa might have been right, after all.

Thanks, Brother

Don’t much listen to radio or watch TV either.

The news, until it makes me mad as hops —

Or a ballgame ever now and then. Seems like

All they want to do is sell you something.

Beer, shampoo, cat food, yet another car.

But one day a snatch of a song caught my ear —

Some man singing about blue eyes crying —

Made me think of Birdie and what we knew

Of Heaven — no pain, no darkness, no crying —

Her and me walking together forever.

Thanks be, Brother Nelson — and Amen.

Jerry Buchanan: 'Rugged Rockface'

Jerry Buchanan lives in Johnson City, Tennessee, and travels to Bakersville, North Carolina, helping his elderly mother. His published poems appear in Quill & Parchment, American Diversity Report, Black Moon Magazine, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Tennessee Voices Anthology, Encore, The Bayou, Blues and Red Clay Poetry Anthology, and Appalachian Journal.

Rugged Rockface

In a north-face overhang bereft of sunlight icy water droplets

cascade on forest green moss. I note powers that draw me

to the ancient colossus called Whiteside Mountain —

                                                  a cold, cruel beauty.

I spy a sheen like the sun upon a high crag —

sparkling white quartz — embedded deep in feldspar.

Steep escarpment plunges 750 feet to the valley floor.

Nearby, I glimpse a peregrine falcon cruising on air currents

around the precipice, sleuthing out prey. The marauder glides

past a ledge, hunting crevices where purple martins come to nest.

Beyond the bounds of the bluff a blue sky, hazy ridges,

white clouds hang as if suspended in a family picture frame.

Looking downward, I turn faint and dizzy — a backstep restores

balance. Weathered scarp marks mountains and valleys cratered below.

The Chattooga Watershed shepherds runoff rainwater into the Chattooga River.

Cherokee natives envisioned an ogress roaming hereabouts.

Named for her long, stony fore-finger used to stab children's hearts,

Spearfinger spread fear as she stole and ate blood-soaked livers.

As a shapeshifter, she shrouded herself like an old woman —

so, the Cherokee could not tell when she stalked their young.

Stories of dark forces wandering Whiteside Mountain

abound — not unlike spirits summoned in Devil's Cauldron.

As the sun sets in mid-October, a bear's silhouette comes

in darkness to rise behind the rocky mount —

black beast prowls the night bed of fallen leaves.

Chilling folklore swells like runnels of cold springs

in the middle of a rainstorm and speeds up the heart.

Contemplating strange happenings in this place,

I blame the ghosts drawn to the unforgiving stone.

David Winship: 'Fishing with Johnny'

David Winship is a retired Washington County, Virginia, educator. He has returned to his homeplace in Bristol, Tennessee, to age on and age out. He writes primarily poetry and nonfiction. He directs the “Sign of the George Letterpress” at King University, Bristol, Tennessee. He is a member of the Appalachian Community of Poets and Writers, as well as Winston-Salem Writers.

Fishing with Johnny

In Memory of Johnny Wood,

long-time morning host of WCYB - Bristol

On Thursday mornings

I go fishing with Johnny

in the mountain streams and lakes,

in the headwaters and tail waters.

Johnny’s morning fishing report

is broadcast like a line

to anglers in the stream.

There’s bass fishing with the

float and fly rig with the

little duck feather jig

along the rocky banks and

off the points.

Fly hatches at 45 degrees

in the upstream areas

but get those tiny Cooper Johns

and Zebra Midges ready

along with Pheasant Tail nymphs

and the blue wing olive hatches.

Down on Boone

they’re tight lining

the little Berkley Gulp minnow

about 20 feet deep

along the bluffs and points.

On Cherokee and Douglas

they’re catching some bass on

duck flies and green hair flies

Silver Buddy and jigging spoon lures

in those deeper runs.

On Watauga and South Holston

black fly hatches in the river’s

upper stretches in the afternoon

Blue Wing Olives

hatch further downstream.

I don’t understand a word he says

but I love to hear him talk.

Jordan Hensley: 'Cicadas'

Jordan Hensley is an Appalachian writer who feels lucky to have been born in East Tennessee and even luckier to currently call Kentucky home. She has won numerous awards for her writing as a journalist and government communicator. In college, she studied journalism and creative writing.

Cicadas 

Mild May leaks into June while the Bourbon Brood roars to life,

emerging after 17 years to an uncanny earth. 

I join them in feeling like a stranger in my own home. 

Wailing alongside the cicadas, our heart songs signal the worst is yet to come. 

I contemplate waiting out the end underground, 

with my hands stretched out in the dark, blindly searching for the after.

When the extinction begins to morph us into a new age, 

I expect my nose will catch the scent.  

My eyes were once trained to seek out the light. 

I hope I can remember what it is.

But I’ll let the sun burn out my own eyes

if it means I make it beyond what plagues us now. 

I fear the warmth of a fresh dawn. 

The memories of false hopes constrict around my lungs. 

I dream of a time the dewy grass will lick our limbs 

as we slither out of our graves, ready to shed our skin. 

Kevin Brown: 'A Forensic Linguist Would Have a Field Day'

Kevin Brown teaches high school English in Nashville. He has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. 

A Forensic Linguist Would Have a Field Day

In high school, a customer at Kroger

asked me if I was from Illinois,

as if the mountains of East Tennessee

echoed like the prairies,

while, not a decade later, Kate said

I sounded somewhere

between Southern and hick —

no wonder I feel like an idiolect

whenever I open my mouth.

I learned grammar from

mimeographed worksheets

we sniffed for the ink residue

and the nightly news with

Walter Cronkite,

but also from my mother,

who rhymes wills with wheels,

as if her death bequeaths a

new car for one of us children,

while arrow sounds like era,

the flight of time put into

pronunciation, leading me

to make MacBeth ponder over

tomorra and tomorra and tomorra.

My accent still slips out whenever

I stop paying attention

to my self-

presentation,

but I construct

my sentences the same way

I do my class

consciousness,

make them both more complex

when I need to convince my audience

of where I’m from now.

Sue Weaver Dunlap: 'FENCE ROWS'

Sue Weaver Dunlap lives in the Appalachian Mountains near Walland, Tennessee, where she and her husband Raymond live on a mountain farm. Dunlap writes poetry, fiction, and memoir. Her poems have appeared in Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Appalachian Journal, Women Speak, and Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. Dunlap’s poetry collections include The Story Tender (FLP 2014), Knead (Main Street Rag 2016), and (A Walk to the Spring House 2021). Her newest collection, Thursday’s Child, was released by Main Street Rag in 2025.

FENCE ROWS

We grow with the setting of a four by corner post, deep in rocky ground,

tight-tied with steel cords wrapped to its side braces, equal distance,

two-bys braced sturdy to a five-strand barbed wire fence, a dusty lane,

edged solid, new chapter begun in this second half of love. Home ground

pastures where black cows gather at feeders, winter calves suckling close

awaiting spring’s tender grasses. Love flows season after season like spring

water flowing from deep in our cave. Sunrise to sunset we shored up love

in chores, sheltered in love, not ready for the gloaming, not ready for fences’

sag and curl, not ready for the demise of these tenuous strings of love.