Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Volume Two, December 2020.
Scott Thomas Outlar lives and writes in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, Georgia. He hosts the site 17Numa.com where links to his published poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, reviews, live events, and books can be found. His podcast, Songs of Selah, airs weekly on 17Numa Radio. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His poem “Kingdom of Chaos” won the 2016 Nibstears Poetry Cave Contest in Nigeria. He was a recipient of the 2017 Setu Magazine Award for Excellence in the field of literature. Selections of his poetry have been translated into Afrikaans, Albanian, Bengali, Dutch, French, Italian, Kurdish, Persian, Serbian, and Spanish.His books include: Songs of a Dissident (Transcendent Zero Press, 2015); Chaos Songs (Weasel Press, 2016); Happy Hour Hallelujah (CTU Publishing, 2016); Poison in Paradise (Alien Buddha Press, 2017); Abstract Visions of Light (Alien Buddha Press, 2018); and Of Sand and Sugar (Cyberwit, 2019).
Of Echoes and Explosions
If mourning doves
and pilot gods
bless our hearts
with promises of flight
the least we can do
is dance ecstatic
and echo the signal
with our feet
or freeze our little tails off
screaming at the sun
to come out and play
– – –
bleed it down
to the final drop
then suck it up
again
and return strong
to the narrow path
– – –
we came from the trees
or from the sea
or some earlier explosion
but all I care about is where we’re headed
Fever
Machiavelli in a red dress
banging on stained windows
with an evil eye in her pocket
and a woe-be-all
heaving sigh
shrugging from shoulder
jumping out the side door
running with the priest class
howling with the wolves
the art of peace
tries to catch a breath
between two subtle shades
of dreaming and scheming
On the Level
Take me back ten notes
ten years
color of almonds
when health was
uncrackably clean
One lone voice
in the park
singing a high pitch
for all to hear
her hum
probably mad
but that’s fine
so are we
© Scott Thomas Outlar