72
2016
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
FINALIST, 2015 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE BY JOAN MCLEAN
Two old men, their jeans loose around the butt, skin loose at the throat, stand on either side of your hospital bed. One, like you, was a city kid. Learned to farm – cotton and beans. The two of you used to drink bourbon on the beach, talk about women. You both had the knack for body surfing – he in his red Speedo, you in your cut-off jeans. The other one came through the woods every morning the summer you built the cabin. He worked barefoot beside you skinning pine logs, hoisting them up with your homemade rig as you jockeyed them into place.
COURTESY OF ASHEVILLE ART MUSEUM BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE COLLECTION, GIFT OF THE ARTIST
Last Days
Soliloquies, 1965 (oil on canvas, 24x30) by Rene Pinchuk
Now two old men lift your shoulders, settle pillows around your head, careful with the IV. One brings his hand to your forehead – a light touch of calluses. His eyes make the trip across your face again and again. The other leans in, his face comes close, his lips brush your brow.
JOAN MCLEAN is an ecologist who lives, works, and writes in Silk Hope, NC. She holds degrees in Botany from UNC Chapel Hill and in Wetland Ecology from Duke University. She is a founding member of the Pittsboro Poets, a group of writers who emerge on Wednesday evenings from the woods of Chatham County to read poems in the kitchen at the Piedmont Biofuels Plant. She is the winner of the New Millennium Writings Prize for Poetry, and her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Third Wednesday, Via Regia, Verdad, and Spillway. Her poem “Up Battle Creek” was also a finalist in the 2015 Applewhite competition and will be published in the NCLR 2016 print issue. Read her two finalist poems in the 2013 competition in NCLR Online 2014.
RENE PINCHUK studied for a year at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy, spent a summer at the Art Institute at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and earned a master’s degree in Drawing and Painting at the University of Michigan. His work has been exhibited in a variety of locations, including Art Zone 461 Gallery in San Franciso and Expressions Gallery in Berkeley, CA. See more of his work on the Asheville Art Museum website.