Writers Who Teach, Teachers Who Write
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2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY LAVONNE J. ADAMS COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
We Think of Night as Still But outside our muted homes, air conditioning units click on and off like crickets, whir like cicadas’ wings. Against the susurrus hush of occasional vehicles traveling from somewhere to somewhere else, the disembodied thrum of music pours from a car’s lowered window. Perhaps God prefers to listen to the thrum of beating hearts, and perhaps it is our bodies that create the heavenly chorus described in Sunday school, which we once envisioned as angels with lyres and lutes, harps and harpsichords. Those of us who lift oversized
Concerto (3) (oil on canvas, 40x40) by Alicia A. Armstrong
boxes, who bolt and unbolt tires; those of us who run, who rest on couches, who rock in chairs on planked porches sipping malt or sweetened tea, are riffs in that complex chorale. Suppose we return to earth again and again, not for some philosophical notion of what we might learn, but to embody particular notes. What if we decide which forms of emotional pain, what measure of joy, we’ll experience as a means of reaching perfect pitch. What if blessedness is not located in some glittering rendition of heaven, that the gathering of souls is instead a luminous audience, anticipating our encore – the exquisite suffering of note after note.
ALICIA A. ARMSTRONG lives and works in Charlotte, NC. She earned her BFA from UNC Asheville. Her work is collected internationally and has appeared in national publications such as American Art Collector, regional publications such as Carolina Home & Garden, and local publications such as Asheville Made. Her art appears in numerous corporate collections, such as the Mission Hospital in Asheville, UNC Asheville, and the South Carolina Environmental Law Project. She is represented in North Carolina by Haen Gallery in Asheville and Sozo Gallery in Charlotte.
