Writing Toward Healing
N C L R ONLINE
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FINALIST, 2020 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE BY LISA M. PURSLEY COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
leftover women unemployed or a lawyer, plump or thin, willing or not. shrinking parents, quacking, waddling siblings: “who will care for you when you get sick?” “if you don’t have babies now we will be too old to care for them.” “all the neighbors – talking about you, about us,” in her living room on thursday evening, her loved ones gather to pass her life around, lift the lid, glance at it. each takes a turn, remarks on her selfishness as if she has an expiration date –
Boxing Day (archival inkjet print from digital photograph, 11x11) by Catharine Carter
Best If Used (i mean) Married By:____ one by one they leave; pitying hugs, noses turned up like she smells of week-old beef and cabbage. her father is last. “we were so proud of you,” before closing the door of the ice box.
LISA M. PURSLEY is a native of North Carolina who returned home after eighteen years in rural West Virginia. She has been featured in The Chaffin Journal, ABZ, Floyd County Moonshine, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, along with other journals and The Anthology of Appalachian Writers and Wild Sweet Notes II: An Anthology of West Virginia Poets. She has been selected to participate in “Women Speak” with the Women of Appalachia Project multiple seasons and was included in Women Speak: 10th Anniversary Anthology.
CATHARINE CARTER lives and works in Chapel Hill, NC. She has a BFA in painting and printmaking from UNC Chapel Hill. Her award-winning art has appeared in Diffusion Magazine, Silvershotz International Journal of Contemporary Photography, and Black and White Magazine. Her work has been featured in numerous galleries and competitions, and her fine art book, Journey: Works of Photomontage, was published by Horse & Buggy Press in 2016. She is a member of the Orange County Artists Guild. See more of her art on her website.