NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Winter 2022
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
126
Born Here (photography printed on canvas, 22x33) by Chris Foley
2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY BENJAMIN PRYOR
The Ladder Pa made a ladder from locust poles he cut in the pasture and hung it on the woodhouse wall. At twelve I propped it on the rancid tin and climbed the roof to view metropolis sheds of Hazelwood. It seemed a trinket town of lockets and dead soldiers. Below, the creek was choked with leaves. The trees were close and I could jump and scale where squirrels nested, and take a baby in my hands and study hard its plum of wrinkled face. But then my Ma would holler me down; the rusted roof might cave. Sheepish, I’d take the ladder Pa had built back to its iron nails. I’d find another way to sing above the town I knew.
CHRIS FOLEY was born in New York City’s Greenwich Village. He earned a BFA in painting and sculpture at Georgetown University. He also attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Visual Information Technology graduate program at George Mason University. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at Michihito Ohtagaki Gallery in Tokyo; Troyer Gallery in Washington, DC; and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He moved to the Asheville, NC, area in 2004, and is the owner and director of Haen Gallery in Asheville, as well as a second gallery location in Brevard, NC.
BENJAMIN PRYOR is a native of Maggie Valley who now lives in Orange County, NC. He earned a BA in English from UNC Greensboro and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Florida and now works in IT and educational assessment in Chapel Hill. His writing has appeared in, among other venues, Oxford American, Southern Review, Cimarron Review, and Best New Poets 2010, as well as in NCLR 2005 and 2016. This is his second time as a finalist.
