SSA Poetry

09/12/2025

Normal Wednesdays and all that.

On This Normal Wednesday, I woke up at 6:15; hit the snooze button twice; threw the covers back at 6:33; untangled Elijah’s rats’ nest head; fought with Elijah about his rats’ nest head; joked abou…

06/18/2025

I wrote this in January of 2024. Everything hurts. Everything.

“There shouldn’t be any pain today,”she said, pushing her glassesup the bridge of her nose and flickingthrough paperwork on her clipboard. That’s good, I said, trying to get comfortablebeing mostly…

04/17/2025

Come join us in Morehead!!!

Writers Guild is April 28th! Come down!

04/16/2025

For my cousin, esteemed professor of some kind of math, Dr. Daryl Swartzentruber. This might be the only poem you ever see me write about math. You're welcome.

There once was a Lickety Split who knew how to take a hard hit. He’d wiggle and shake, refused all the brakes, and got out of there, fast with his wit. “His wit,” you ask and you scratch, “is…

03/20/2025

It was a shock and a delight to see my face pop up in a women’s history month feature for female Kentucky writers. Thanks Nicholas County Public Library for including me 🥰

In honor of Women's History Month, we are celebrating the work of our female authors across the state. Today, Sarah Stoltzfus Allen

According to Sarah, "I, above all else, love a Terry’s dark chocolate orange on Christmas morning. I’m a mom, an avid earl grey tea drinker, and I tolerate my cat. When I get the time, and sometimes I have to make it, I write poems, hike the hills of my beloved Eastern Kentucky home, and dream outlandish dreams. What seems like a lifetime ago, I studied music education and creative writing at Morehead State University. You can find me published in various online and print journals and if you catch me not looking, you could sneak a peek at my journal. I live, and love, in my small house on the edge of a hill in West Liberty, Kentucky and can’t imagine life anywhere else."

02/28/2025

New Book Day!!!!!

https://bottlecap.press/products/conversation

02/15/2025

In our house, it is a fine line between participating in some of the rituals that make my boys feel safe and explaining to them that sometimes our luck may run out. No matter how faithful we are to the rituals.

A sudden rain will make him fret and frown,he’ll gather boots and batteries and light,while I, his mother, pray the river down, find every single candle that can be found,and hope the weather stops…

10/22/2024

I'm feeling my middle-ish age today! If you're feeling a bit, blah about being middle aged, this poem is for you!

or, Sonnet 2, if Old Bill Shakes had Considered Reality When forty winters crown my aging headand crow’s feet line the smile around my eyes,my youth will start its journey down the drain,and I don’…

10/22/2024

Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall???

I’ve been keeping a secret for the last month or so and now I can share it with you all! My second chapbook, Conversation, is available for purchase from Bottlecap Press. I’m really proud of this collection and hope you will love it!

https://bottlecap.press/products/conversation

08/13/2024

My oldest is headed to high school tomorrow and I’m feeling some sort of way about it!

05/12/2024

There’s a local-ish poetry slam happening in Grayson on May 23. Mark your calendars, practice your poems, and come on down and join us!

We're coming back, for a one-night event at The Nook & Cranny Coffeehouse during Grayson's Memory Days!
Thursday, May 23, at 5:30 p.m.

Because this is a Memory Days event, organized in conjunction with the Carter County Poetry Society, all poems must be family friendly this time around.
Cash prizes will still be awarded.

(And, stay tuned for more news.😉)

04/26/2024

Over on TikTok there are lots of people talking about how Shakespeare sounds better in an Appalachian accent instead of an English Accent. I love me some Shakespeare, but if Old Bill Shakes had been living and loving in Eastern Kentucky he would never have compared anyone to a summer’s day! Summer days around these parts can be brutally hot and humid. But summer nights? Well, those can be fantastic!

So, I rewrote his famous Sonnet 18! I hope you enjoy it!

Check out Sarah Stoltzfus Allen’s video.