26
2017
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
FINALIST, 2016 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE BY PEG BRESNAHAN
Auricles
thump its warning. We don’t have conversations the way we once did. No longer do I ask a question from another room, talk with my back turned. Now, it’s face to face. When the phone rings for you, I walk rooms, hallways, rap on closed doors. Absurd to be annoyed when I cannot imagine you gone, the house an echo, your office a space for guests. Do you know at night, when I round the corner into our room, the first thing I look for is the hill of your feet beneath the sheet?
PHOTOGRAPH BY TONI TRONU; COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
When the cat hid one of your hearing aids in my hiking boot, I walked down the trail with its rub. My big toe heard a mole tunnel among sassafras roots, a rabbit
To Feel, 2016 (acrylic on canvas, 10x8x2) by Ellen Hathaway
PEG BRESNAHAN’s second book of poetry, In a Country None of Us Called Home, was published by Press 53 in 2014. Recently her poems have appeared in Kakalak, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and The Great Smokies Review. Bresnahan’s poem “The Presence of Wonder” was a finalist for the 2015 James Applewhite Poetry Prize and was published in NCLR Online 2016. She moved to Cedar Mountain, NC, from Sturgeon Bay, WI, twelve years ago.
Raleigh resident ELLEN HATHAWAY was born in Washington, NC. She earned a BA in Media from UNC Chapel Hill and her Master’s in Teaching from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. She later worked in sales and in the classroom before pursuing classes in painting. She completed residencies in Masters Directed Independent Study with Steven Aimone in 2015 and 2016. She has exhibited widely in solo and group shows, including the annual James Applewhite Poetry Invitational sponsored by City Art Gallery in Greenville and NCLR. Her works are in numerous private and corporate collections, including Martha Jefferson Hospital and the Battle Building at the Children’s Hospital, UVA, both in Charlottesville, VA, as well as Winchester Hospital in Winchester, MA. See more of her art on her website.