Ghazal: Reflection and We Think of Night as Still

2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST

BY LAVONNE J. ADAMS

Ghazal: Reflection

Against sable sky, the clouds seem dipped in mercury, mirrors of moonlight. Still, lacking lightning and thunder’s glissando, the night belies the word storm.

From eaves to ground, solitary raindrops mime a watery wind chime, distill the weather front from ephemeral to earthy – something we can feel.

Like a small resurrection, the air is laundered of exhaust, the tang of garbage. Stilled stoplights flash, cast amber pools like pollen across pavement.

Those of us who are awake during night’s opaque envelope crave this stillness, our neighbors’ windows glistening like sheets of black ice.

Branches of live oaks mimic an opera-gloved audience. Yet dreams instill an unease that will shadow dawn like an unfed dog. Then . . .

the revenant sun shall spread its carpet, resurfacing the water-glazed streets. Be still, dear reader. Wait for the clarity that every transformation brings.

Bathed in Light (oil and cold wax on cradled panel, 24x24) by Carmen Grier

CARMEN GRIER’s studio and home are located in Bakersville, NC, near Penland School of Craft in rural Mitchell County. She earned a BA in music from the University of Iowa, an MA from UI in Textile Design, followed by an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI. She has been creating functional and art textiles for forty years and has recently added painting to her current practice. She has taught and exhibited nationally, been awarded national and international residencies, and her award-winning work has been featured in Fiberarts Magazine and Surface Design Journal. LAVONNE J. ADAMS is the author of Through the Glorieta Pass (Pearl Books, 2009), two poetry chapbooks, and more than 150 individual poetry publications. Retired now, she was a lecturer and MFA Coordinator for the Creative Writing Department at UNC Wilmington. Her most recent publication is a group of fourteen poems and an introductory essay appearing in Artful Dodge. She has completed residencies at the Harwood Museum of Art (University of New Mexico-Taos), The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center, and she was a GilbertChappell Distinguished Poet for Eastern North Carolina.

2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST

BY LAVONNE J. ADAMS

We Think of Night as Still

But outside our muted homes, air conditioning units click on and off like crickets, whir like cicadas’ wings.

Against the susurrus hush of occasional vehicles traveling from somewhere to somewhere else, the disembodied

thrum of music pours from a car’s lowered window. Perhaps God prefers to listen to the thrum

of beating hearts, and perhaps it is our bodies that create the heavenly chorus described in Sunday school,

which we once envisioned as angels with lyres and lutes, harps and harpsichords. Those of us who lift oversized

boxes, who bolt and unbolt tires; those of us who run, who rest on couches, who rock in chairs on planked porches

sipping malt or sweetened tea, are riffs in that complex chorale. Suppose we return to earth again and again, not for some

philosophical notion of what we might learn, but to embody particular notes. What if we decide which forms of emotional

pain, what measure of joy, we’ll experience as a means of reaching perfect pitch. What if blessedness is not located

in some glittering rendition of heaven, that the gathering of souls is instead a luminous audience, anticipating

our encore – the exquisite suffering of note after note.

Concerto (3) (oil on canvas, 40x40) by Alicia A. Armstrong

ALICIA A. ARMSTRONG lives and works in Charlotte, NC. She earned her BFA from UNC Asheville. Her work is collected internationally and has appeared in national publications such as American Art Collector, regional publications such as Carolina Home & Garden, and local publications such as Asheville Made. Her art appears in numerous corporate collections, such as the Mission Hospital in Asheville, UNC Asheville, and the South Carolina Environmental Law Project. She is represented in North Carolina by Haen Gallery in Asheville and Sozo Gallery in Charlotte.