North Carolina African American Literature
N C L R ONLINE
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FINALIST, 2018 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE BY L. TERESA CHURCH
Fire and Brimstone Between downpours we dashed straight from the church house to the bootleg house. COURTESY OF ERNIE BARNES ART
White lightning ran tandem with rain & 45 rpm records stacked on the turntable’s spindle. Our teenage black peppercorn selves we could grind so fine shave a melon to the rind & never lose no juice between downpours. We funked good dresses sweated starch from white shirts stomped love and heartbreak songs into the plank floor eased on back to church & our mamas never guessed
Club 55 (acrylic on canvas, 36x48) by Ernie Barnes
we’d ever strayed from the sermon’s warning about fire burning souls in hell.
ERNIE BARNES (1938–2009) was an African American artist from Durham, NC. At North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University), he majored in art on a full athletic scholarship and went on to play in the NFL from 1959 to 1964. He was the first American professional athlete to become a noted painter. He created album covers for Marvin Gaye and B.B. King, among others, and his paintings were used in the TV show Good Times, The Sugar Shack appearing in the opening and closing credits and other works as needed for the show’s main character, an artist. Barnes’s numerous honors include being named “Sports Artist of the 1984 Olympic Games” by the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and “America’s Best Painter of Sports” in 2004 by the American Sport Art Museum & Archives.