North Carolina Literary Review Online Winter 2022

Page 67

Writers Who Teach, Teachers Who Write

N C L R ONLINE

67

2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY MARK SMITH-SOTO

Clichés Time flies is one, and so is love and so’s that third repeat in a riff meant to resound. And so’s the appearance, in the rosy morning light, of two hearts traced on COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

a dusty window. And so is death and so are those grey poodles in their winter best, rose-printed bows tied at their necks. And so’s an apple plucked from a low branch, held half-bitten in the hand, and so is death. Too corny for words – well, almost. Isn’t it what words aspire to after all is said, to repeat memorably like “What the eyes don’t see, the heart won’t feel,” or “Love’s like a red, red rose” – or say, just for example, death?

And at the End (mixed media on paper, 30x22) by Francisco Gonzalez

Costa Rican-American poet MARK SMITH-SOTO has been with the International Poetry Review at UNC Greensboro for almost thirty years. Along with three prize-winning chapbooks, he has authored three full-length poetry collections, Our Lives Are Rivers (University Press of Florida, 2003), Any Second Now (Main Street Rag, 2006), and Time Pieces (Main Street Rag, 2015; reviewed in NCLR Online 2016). He won the James Applewhite Poetry Prize in 2012, and his winning entry and another finalist were published in the 2013 NCLR issues. NCLR Online 2013 also featured him in an essay on North Carolina’s Latinx writers, and his poetry has also appeared in NCLR 2001, 2012, and NCLR Online 2020. Smith-Soto’s work has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize and was recognized in 2006 with an NEA Fellowship in Creative Writing. His Fever Season: Selected Poetry of Ana Istarú (2010) and his lyrical memoir Berkeley Prelude (2013) were both published by Unicorn Press.

Charlotte, NC resident FRANCISCO GONZALEZ is a native of Mexico. A mostly self-taught artist, his work has been exhibited throughout the Carolinas, Georgia, Oregon and New York. He was a featured artist in the exhibitions Celebrating The Legacy of Romare Bearden at The Mint Museum Of Art in Charlotte, The Mint Museum’s Arte-Poesia-Música and the annual Con A de Arte, and the Arte Latino Now at Queens University, Charlotte. His art appears in several private, permanent, and corporate collections throughout North Carolina. He has received awards from Associated Artists of Winston-Salem, NC, and the Charlotte Art League. His affiliations include ArtSi and the OBRA Collective, both in Charlotte, and Art for Art’s Sake in Winston-Salem.


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Articles inside

n Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues

1hr
pages 102-132

Calling the Bluff on Show-Don’t-Tell

6min
pages 96-97

The Transformational Potential of Writing

6min
pages 92-93

Wintering

2min
pages 90-91

J.J. – 1985

2min
pages 86-87

A Year of Collected Notes: Storytelling Sublime

6min
pages 88-89

Being Christian, Being Jewish

6min
pages 84-85

Love – and Mushrooms and Zooms – in the Ruins

19min
pages 76-82

Debut Novel by Halli Gomez Wins NC AAUW Award

1min
page 71

Turning Reality on Its Head

14min
pages 72-75

Charting Grief, Seeking Solace

8min
pages 68-70

Clichés

2min
page 67

Why I Flinch at the Thought of Daylight Squandered

2min
pages 62-63

A Reading Full of Light

4min
pages 60-61

More Than a Haircut

2min
pages 52-53

A Roving Search for Provisions of Any Kind

4min
pages 58-59

An Unsung Legend

8min
pages 49-51

Ghazal: Reflection and We Think of Night as Still

3min
pages 56-57

Stories about Growing Up Black and Female in America

5min
pages 54-55

The Eye

1min
page 48

You Can Come Home Again – and Be Lauded Jim Grimsley Receives 2021 Hardee Rives Dramatic Arts Award

3min
page 31

Linking the Common and the Uncanny

8min
pages 28-30

People Constructed of Pain and Grief

5min
pages 16-17

New Fiction Reckons with Landscape of Change

9min
pages 20-22

Mixed Messages: A Southern Childhood

3min
pages 18-19

First Published Novel by a Member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Receives 2021 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award

6min
pages 26-27

Betrayal

1min
page 23

“The Black Condition” in Hell of a Book

5min
pages 12-13

They Have Been at Something Some Carrion, a Deer, or Such

5min
pages 24-25

Borrowed Light

2min
pages 14-15
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