Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
N C L R ONLINE
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2022 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY JANIS HARRINGTON
Dead Sea Pantoum COURTESY OF GALLERY C
Below sea level, I float on your palm, buoyed up by water denser than oceans or tears. Senior trip to Israel, a year after the Six-Day War. You clown, a magician levitating his lady. But it is dense water holding me up, not a boy in a peace sign t-shirt and aviator glasses, clowning, imitating a magician’s trick. Red pillar on a high ledge, Lot’s wife pities us: girl slender as a reed, boy in a peace sign t-shirt. Sheer cliffs pocked with caves, scrolls hidden in clay jars, guarded by Lot’s wife, pillar of grief. War’s swinging door stirs parched air. Cave-pocked cliffs. The future a hidden scroll. My Instamatic snaps a tank, soldiers on our bus – war’s swinging door stirring parched air – a vacated bunker, a man’s jacket draping a stool.
Time Shift, c. 1995 (oil on canvas, 19.5x24) Horace Farlowe
I snap a tank, soldiers on our bus, you posing in a ditch below the marker: Earth’s Lowest Point, blue windbreaker draping your shoulder. Reckless. The sand a cache of landmines.
Drafted, you didn’t come home from Vietnam. Decades later, downsizing, I find a yellow box: color photos of us, eighteen and immortal. Film now a relic, but we haven’t aged
A letter marks our life’s lowest point: when we return home, you’re drafted for Vietnam. Cautious. Rice paddies a cache of landmines. I mail photos of us, eighteen, immortal.
inside the yellow box, still young, decades later. Desert sun. Salt, white as linen, on my skin. Your grin on film, a relic, but you didn’t age. Don’t look back at what was lost. Desert sun, salt like linen on my skin. Our senior trip, a year after the Six-Day War. Don’t look back at what was lost. Once, below sea level, I floated on your palm.
Robbins, NC, native HORACE FARLOWE (1933–2006) joined the US Navy and served in Korea before returning stateside in 1957 to begin his study of art at NCSU. He earned a second bachelor’s degree in painting from Atlantic Christian College and enrolled at ECU in the master’s program in sculpture, graduating in 1964. From that point on, he was an active artist and held no fewer than five professorships. His public sculptural commissions include the NC Zoological Park in Asheville, the Complex Esportiu Municipal in Barcelona, Elon University, and the Museum of Texas Tech University. His sculptures are in numerous permanent collections, including the NC Museum of Art, Mint Museum, and the Greenville Museum of Art. See more of his art at Gallery C in Raleigh and on the gallery’s website.