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[with poems by Jim Zola, Rhett Trull, Celisa Steele, Nancy Martin-Young,
Khalisa Rae, Joanie McLean
Khalisa Rae, Joanie McLean
and a special feature by Felicia van Bork and ampydoo]
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Learning to Live
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For years I walked out and heard
rustling in the rhododendron
that blooms each spring and paper-mâchés
the patio with white petals.
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Yet I’ve never seen wings or nest
or bolt of bird such as one might reason.
Just the flurried sound, a semaphore
of leaves and branch, that could be finch
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or swallow, but isn’t.
Not coincidence, I’m convinced,
this signal more subtle than lightning
is grammar for my soul,
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an insistence that I must find
a way to live among the small things
with bones like air and hearts
like small sledgehammers.
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Jim Zola, winner of the 2023 Lena Shull Book Award of the NC Poetry Society for his manuscript It’s the Unremarkable that Will Last, which will be published by Redhawk Press. Learning to Live originally appeared in Rat’s Ass Review.
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Night before last Linda opened the final frontier of jigsaws. Galactically difficult, broad swaths of monochromatic nebulae, the merest quantum fluctuation in individual shapes – I fear that to complete this one I may have to boldly go where no one has gone before.
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I almost give up before I even finish the border, its infinite deep unvarying black. Be logical here, Bill! I array the pieces by subtle color variation, columns and rows, and turn on all the lamps in the room. Still only cold inhospitable vacuum. Suddenly from the depth of blank stare I discover my fingers picking up pieces and fitting them together, six, then eight, little cellules of life spontaneously generating until logic again reaches in and shuts me down.
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Is this how creativity works? A little bit Spock – analyzing patterns and calculating probabilities. A bit more Kirk – impulse, hunch, release to the flow of the subliminal. A prompt, a theme, a roadmap, all good – semper paratus – but I know for myself that the most likely moment for a line to leap up and embrace me is when I’m in free fall in love with a poem I’m reading. Creativity perches just at the periphery longing to show me the piece that will fit, the one I’ve been looking all along.
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Felicia van Bork and Alan Michael Parker offer to tickle that little perching creature until you feel its firebreath in your ear. Draw a portrait without looking at the page or lifting your pen. Write five things you would never do and pick the most interesting. The two multi-creatives led The Best Creativity Workshop Ever at NC Poetry Society’s September 16 meeting at the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh. Felicia describes her life as a love affair with art. AMP describes his next book as a collection of flash fiction and Bingo cards. And when I asked if they would contribute to this feature on NCPS @ NCMA, I should have expected that they would send something unexpected.
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Drawing Exercise No. 30
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We come in peace.
We are the Are
Me.
Do not be a
Fraid.
Draw with us.
Together we take up
charcoal
and
Touch
the wall up high
Hi!
high as we can.
We draw down with force.
Use more force.
We step back we step forward.
We connect the vertical lines by drawing
Strong
horizontal strokes
again
again
Until we have made a fence a wall
To shelter us from the Fraids
Who will not cannot join the Are
Me.
Trace the outline of the person next to you.
Look, that outline is visible through the fence
That is a Fraid.
Now with your eraser erase the Fraid.
It won’t erase yes it smears.
It becomes more present yes the more we erase it.
Now it is inside the fence with us.
All the Fraids are inside with us.
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Felicia van Bork @draw_felicia_draw
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. Alan Michael Parker @ampydoo
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Each September the North Carolina Poetry Society meets to feature readings by winners of the year’s most competitive contests. This year for the first time NCPS has held this meeting at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, with a morning of readings, the afternoon workshop, and an open air “pop-up” mic-less open mic hosted by Regina Garcia and Caren Stuart.
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The 2023 Lena M. Shull Book Award for an unpublished manuscript from a North Carolina poet (coordinator Sherry Thrasher) goes to Jim Zola for his collection It’s the Unremarkable that Will Last; finalists are Nancy Martin-Young and Joanie McLean. INFO
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The Brockman-Campbell Book Contest is for the best volume of poetry published by a native or resident of NC in the previous year (coordinator Preston Martin); the 2023 winner is Joseph Bathanti for Light at the Seam, with finalists Eric Nelson for Horse Not Zebra and Katherine Soniat for Polishing the Glass Storm. INFO
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The Susan Laughter Meyers Poetry Fellowship (coordinator Steve Cushman) provides an honorarium and a week’s residency at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities. The 2023 winner is Rhett Iseman Trull of Greensboro, with finalists Khalisa Rae, Celisa Steele, Anne Myles, and RK Fauth. INFO
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The Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition is sponsored by the North Carolina Writer’s Network coordinated by Terry L. Kennedy. Winning entries are published in storySouth and will be available to read there in the coming months. The 2023 winner is Joshua Martin, with finalists Maria Rouphail and Melinda Thomsen. INFO
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This is the first year for the Jaki Shelton Green Performance Poetry Prize, co-sponsored by NCPS and North Carolina Literary Review at East Carolina University (coordinator Devra Thomas). Winners’ videos will be posted online; the 2023 winner is Allan Wolf, with finalists Michael Loderstedt, Onyx Bradley, and Janet Ford. INFO
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The Stars Align Themselves in Ancient Sisterhoods of Light
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And Jade and I sat on the hood of her car
and didn’t mind the rain, the sun
that ticked on anyway, the sun would not go out.
And Megan held my hair back.
And Molly taught me cigarettes. And Sarah
kept her promise not to tell. And Riley told.
And Coach chased me down—night
we lost the playoffs and I’d planned
to kill myself, out the bus emergency door, took off
for the roof downtown—and she carried me to
Brittney’s and Brittney leant me dry clothes, underwear and all,
and let me sleep beside her, in the morning
bought us donuts, even though
I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep.
And sometimes it was as if there were
a party thrown to save me, devout
committees formed, tasked
with just that job. And
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sometimes there was no one
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but wind off the ocean, the evening
all laid out before me like bedclothes,
and even the gleam in the eye of the wren
and the sunrise all red-dressed and boasting and once
there was this Great Dane, Charlie,
who knew—somehow he knew—
on my lap the full-grown anchor of his body, head
to my shoulder, world I didn’t want
to want to leave.
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And Caleb sewed the captain star
I’d ripped from my letter jacket and
kissed me when I needed to be kissed, Bridge
of Sighs and all of Venice incandescent, inviting me
to drown. And kissing didn’t save me. And anything
might save me. And Karen understood.
And Joy did not. And Lauren grew delphinium,
she said, just for me. And Jenny—when the light spiked
sharp and I forgot the way to breathe—
held me for an hour
outside the party, outside everybody else’s ease
and laughter. And Corey found me in the field.
Her hair like smoke and ribbons. We didn’t need
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to speak or touch, just watched the sky
until the bats delivered twilight. And Eli
deemed my pain divine and let me see
above his bed where he’d drawn a map of his
in a fever of blue ink after watching Fight Club, and did not
take my clothes off, even though he could.
And Brittney brought me everywhere and Brittney
kept me in her Jeep and Brittney did the talking
when I had no words.
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And Nicky gave her lucky coin and Chris
the flannel off his back right after class, right
when I said I loved it. And Janelle at two a.m.,
no hesitation, let me in and shared the Irish whiskey
she’d been saving, lit us candles, until
we were the last, we were sure, awake alive.
And Leah steered us into safety, let me rest
across the back seat, Indigo Girls and yes,
I’m on fire, I’m on fire through the years.
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And Jade couldn’t take it anymore
and turned away. And Heather sent an actual
disinvitation, her stationary tinged the palest pink,
but Lizzie patched me up
in the back of the cathedral and kept
her hand on me all night, even in her sleep.
And Holden stayed past visiting hours
and Vanessa, the night nurse, let him. And
under the oak tree, Stephanie
told me all her secrets.
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And Brittney came each time I called,
even though her date, even though her finals, even though
I take and take and make myself the center
of each story. And Greta wrote me songs
and Katie said crawl in and
Mary did my portrait as a shadow.
And Adrienne pinned me down,
fiercest hug until I promised
not to jump. I didn’t jump. I didn’t
swallow the whole bottle. I threw out
the razor blade, even though I hid it first awhile
and touched it sometimes like a lover.
I’m lucky. And that’s all. I’m lucky
I am loved.
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Rhett Trull, winner of the 2023 Susan Laughter Meyers Poetry Fellowship. Originally published in Litmosphere 2023 of Charlotte Lit.
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The Minister of Loneliness
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has no children of her own to entrust
to an aproned au pair, no quick kisses
as she leaves each morning for work. And she
has no spouse who might grow melancholy
like temperamental orchids in the vaulted halls
of the silent house, who might open cupboards, search
neat rows of goods for a jar—just one—graced
with his wife’s precise fingerprints. And she has no
friends waiting for her call, no waggling dog
waiting to be fed. No, she was appointed
to this post because she could give everything
to this Ministry, prepared by the paper
she wrote in college—eons ago—on the geology
of loneliness that proves it doesn’t crumble
like sandstone, isn’t fissile as shale. No,
it’s smooth, she showed, and cold as polished
marble. The kind that won’t be carved into the face
of someone beloved. The kind that remains
blank and empty and clean
as counters in a kitchen where no one ever cooks.
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Celisa Steele, finalist for the 2023 Susan Laughter Meyers Poetry Fellowship. Originally appeared in Southern Poetry Review.
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A Suitable Place
Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh, North Carolina
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I: Pick Up the Wind Phone
First, choose to wander a path with the dead
through the granite gate, past the stone bridge.
There are no signs to point the way.
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Scan the landscape until you notice it, study
how it stands, nearly hidden in a hollow
downhill from the Gothic House of Memory:
a spare wooden booth, its rotary phone
discreetly placed for the disconnected.
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Lift your hand to hold the heavy receiver.
Take a breath and dial the old exchange—
the one made up of words and numbers,
the one you still remember from a time
long before cell phones and contact lists.
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Say hello. Speak their names. Then wait.
Share the news about the house or the baby
or the oak tree that fell in last week’s storm.
Ask forgiveness. Listen for the wind to answer
you, who are left behind, who seek an open line.
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II: Scan the Landscape
Deep shade, open lanes, no traffic,
perfect for power-walking past cool stones
and twisted angels or treading up the hill
of Gettysburg dead, mostly Confederates
come home at last, but six who wore blue
unresting, out of place, as I am.
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Downhill, a doe browses,
tearing faded roses from a funeral wreath.
Twin headstones pop from too-green grass,
names and birthdates freshly carved,
death dates empty, blank and patient.
Most graves are full, but life lingers
on the landscape’s edges.
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While newer graveyards raze markers
to the ground, Oakwood’s monuments tower.
Workers wield weed-whackers daily,
keeping grass at bay. A toy truck,
a mini bottle of Jack—mementos left behind
on plots prove to the living that the dead lived too.
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Today only I
stand in the echoing House of Memory
remembering my father, hacking his last.
His ashes kill time in my sister’s hutch.
Would he rest easy here beneath the oaks?
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I’m a transplanted Yankee
trying to live long,
but in the end
I think I’d like it here
near these protruding stones
that someone has to rake around.
I’d like to have my daughter trace
my name with her finger, leave
a bottle of Malbec and two glasses.
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Nancy Martin-Young, finalist for the 2023 Lena Shull Book Award. This poem first published in Flying South, 2023
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Circus Acts: No More Black Girl Magic
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Black woman,
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This world will make you circus,
freak show, tightrope walker,
contort your name from Saartjie
to “Sara Bartman,”
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Hottentot Venus—stage performer.
Look, how they abracadabra the
royal exploitation of your form.
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Watch them dissect your broad
bottom saw you into science experiment.
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Call your mending—magic
your root balm and salve a work
of the devil–sorcery. Go out the trap
door, come back in the body
of Beyoncé—prized possession,
they will spit-shine the stage for you again.
What a spectacular woman—
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two-headed and omnipresent
one foot here, one foot in Houdini-state.
Your magic trick is: “Look at all the wonder
I can do with two hands and twenty-four hours.”
When people say, “That’s Black Girl Magic.”
say, “I have no magic for you. I make meals
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from crumbs, cast demons with just
my tongue, envision possibility
from potential.” That makes me
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scientist, inventor, chemist—
spiritual being. Tell them this is
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not super, this is survival.
When they call you hero,
when they hand you the cape anyway,
ask, “Haven’t I carried enough?”
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When they call your strength otherworldly,
say, it is Venus rising
within me, nothing more.
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Khalisa Rae, finalist for the 2023 Susan Laughter Meyers Poetry Fellowship. This poem is from her debut collection, Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat (Red Hen Press 2021).
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Into My Field
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Pete the old bay horse
called to me this morning
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not so that I could hear
but so that I could not look away
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he stood apart from the others
as an old horse will
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his ribs showed a bit
as an old horse’s will
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his russet face
with the white blaze
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held so still– arrested while grazing
held my gaze without effort
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and his black mane so lush
so thoroughly tossed
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gave him a touch of wild
that wild that gathers these days
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these fall days – translucent days
days of transubstantiation
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all those things
in your hands and your lap
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put them away
come into my field
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and stay this time
till you are cold and hungry
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and even then
stay
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Joanie Mclean, finalist for the 2023 Lena Shull Book Award. Her manuscript, Like Wind Into Air, received honorable mention and has been accepted for publication with Redhawk Press.
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Thank you, Bill. Joyce Compton Brown