74
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Winter 2024
2023 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY CHERYL SKINNER
Blue Delusions I saw Barry in a blue coffin when I was seven– Like a sleeping, plastic, painted, life-sized doll, a small, silent statue, stiff and still on blue satin. Three days ago, he was a real boy. He played on the playground. He laughed and ran and said, “damn,” chased us girls in circles. He climbed the monkey bars, hung upside down, his yellow hair dangling in greasy strings. Looking up at him from the ground, I saw pink pumping to his motley face, mischief swirling in his eyes. Tobacco twine wound through his belt loops, knotted for pants too big, a patched hole in the knee. His shirt rode up his belly, ripped on the sleeve. He drowned in the afternoon shimmer of a farm pond that from the road sparkled clean and blue, where catfish swam, and turtles slid off felled trees, where Barry searched for cattails, reached deep and yanked the roots, where the muddy gut of the pond sucked and swallowed Barry and held him there till morning.
CHERYL SKINNER was born, raised, and educated in North Carolina. She has lived in Greenville for her entire life, attended Mount Olive Jr. College, and graduated from East Carolina University. She has published in Mount Olive Review and was a finalist in a previous Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize Competition.