North Carolina Literature and the Other Arts
N C L R ONLINE
35
FINALIST, 2016 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE BY JOAN MCLEAN
Do you know
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
that I carried your little boy last night through the crowd at the annual Christmas party – the party you had thrown for years, the one the whole town turned out for. Oysters-on-the-half-shell served in the parking lot, barbecue at the loading dock, bottles of expensive champagne sunk to their shoulders in pails of shaved ice – just as you had always done. Could you see how everyone’s expression changed – that shift around the eyes, the inhale – as they realized whom I held. Your little boy reached for the cookie tray, and as we passed what had been your office, could you see him turn and point his chocolate finger.
Threnody (acrylic on canvas, 24x24) by Melinda Fine
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 2014 winner of the New Millennium Writings Prize for Poetry, and her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Third Wednesday, Via Regia Journal, Verdad, and Spillway. She has been a finalist twice before in the James Applewhite Poetry Prize competition; those poems are in NCLR Online 2014, NCLR Online 2016, and NCLR 2016.
Boston native MELINDA FINE grew up in Greensboro, NC. She earned BA degrees in English and psychology, followed by an MFA in creative writing at UNC Greensboro. She pursued her interest in art and later was accepted into the graduate program in graphic design at North Carolina State University’s School of Design. She taught for nearly ten years at Meredith College, while also working as a freelance graphic designer. Since 1997, Fine has designed and illustrated for commercial clients, including Nortel, W.W. Norton, University of Florida Press, Copernicus Group, and Cornell University. Currently, she works out of Trifecta Studio in Raleigh. Her art has been exhibited widely throughout North Carolina and in Florida, and she is a member of the Durham Art Guild, Visual Artist Association, and Artspace Artist Association. See more of her art on her website.