North Carolina Miscellany
N C L R ONLINE
109
2023 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY ALESSANDRA NYSETHER-SANTOS
how / like you see me after Lauren Zuniga, “Submissive” I am the prayer mat & you, the devoted whispering divinity like moonbeams so soft it flutters into kisses all over / through me a breeze rippling all my pages. You understand electricity / my body – can see it glowing, feel it / me slow & open / surrender to the frequency – an ancient current, you a conductor attuned to the humming deep within.
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Lips buzzing & begging kiss / bite me, here & here touch / hold all of me love / worship me till I see gods / my self how / like you see me holy
Blue Breeze (acrylic on canvas, 15x30 by Gabriela Costas
ALESSANDRA NYSETHER-SANTOS is a Brazilian American writer and teacher in eastern North Carolina. She has had poems published in the lickety-split, Space538 Poetry Hotline, Expressions, and the anthology Atè Mais: Latinx Futurisms.
GABRIELA COSTAS is a native of Orán, Salta, in northern Argentina. She earned BAs in Art Education and Fine Art, with a major in painting, at the National University of Córdoba. She has taught art both in secondary and tertiary institutions in Argentina and Montreal. Her works have been exhibited in Salta and Córdoba, Argentina, in Montreal, Quebec, and in Winston-Salem, NC, where she now lives. In 2021, her art was recognized by the FedEx Global Education Center at UNC Chapel Hill, and she was selected as one of thirteen North Carolina artists of Latin American heritage to be included in an exhibit at the UNC Global Education Center in Chapel Hill.