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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Winter 2022
2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY J.S. ABSHER
Flower of Zeus He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants.—Job 1:3 Trellising the one rose, admiring the surviving verbena, deadheading the marigold, and watering the solitary peony and four hellebore, 18 irises, 13 begonias (in pots and out), three pansies, spreading phlox and bugleweed; caring for one son (far), one stepson (near), two elderberries, two kinds of mint, one kind wife to cling to in pain and in peace, the Holy Spirit – all cultivated against ruin and despair: I ponder that man who loved his herds and flocks, his sons and daughters, secure in his sense of rightness, of a life of plenitude and joy.
J.S. ABSHER is a six-time finalist whose first full-length book, Mouth Work (St. Andrews University Press, 2016; reviewed in NCLR Online 2017) won the 2015 Lena Shull Book Competition sponsored by the North Carolina Poetry Society. His work has been published in approximately fifty journals and anthologies, including Visions International, Tar River Poetry, and Southern Poetry Anthology, VII: North Carolina. He lives with his wife, Patti, in Raleigh, NC.
