122
2015
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
number 24
HONORABLE MENTION, 2014 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE BY MARTY SILVERTHORNE
Our names came out of the radio. Marty for Marty Robbins, Lynn for Loretta. Gene for Gene Autry, Hank for half a dozen Hanks who sank into bourbon. When the windows were raised in spring, crickets chimed in like Byrd’s steel backing up Ernest Tubb. Grandma swore if Ernest ever stepped out of the TV set she’d waltz across Texas with him, but she was stretching the wool because she’d never leave Jasper who couldn’t hit a flat note with a good hammer. You can shimmy up this family tree and find a dozen Earls and Lesters, Kitty or Norma Jean singing you into a honkytonk heaven. Who hadn’t rather drink muddy water and sleep in a hollow log, or be blind as Ray Charles and ate up with music? Faron and Ray Price, smooth as good bootleg. Aunt Patsy couldn’t hit a note if it was her ticket to heaven; she was crazy and Willie’s “Walls” couldn’t hold her. Uncle Johnny was J.R. Cash; he looked all over Doodle Hill for one of Mother Maybelle’s daughters, but he took up with one of the Hill girls in a tater-ridge necklace and cockroach stockings.
COURTESY OF LEE HANSLEY GALLERY
How We Got Our Names
There won’t no blue suede shoes or Buddy Holly rock-a-billy, just Doodle Hill Stomp, Sears and Roebuck mail order flat top guitars, Uncle Fred’s cigar box full of juice harps. It was porch sitting, moonshine sipping, roll calling the Opry, wanting the glitter of Porter’s suits, pistols off Webb’s Pontiac. These comers and goers were named for the greats weeping out of the Saturday night radio.
Return Trip Home (mixed media collage on panel, 11.5x6.5) by Richard Kinnaird
MARTY SILVERTHORNE lives in Greenville, NC. He received his BA from St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, NC, and his MS from ECU. He has published four chapbooks, and his poems have appeared in numerous literary journals including NCLR 2008, 2009, and 2011, as well as Tar River Poetry, and Pembroke Magazine. He has received several North Carolina Arts Regional Grants to support his work, and in 1993, he received the Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award. Listen to the current North Carolina Poet Laureate, Shelby Stephenson, read this poem at the 2014 North Carolina Writers Conference.
RICHARD KINNAIRD (1931–2013) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received his undergraduate degree from Carlton College in Northfield, MN, in 1954. He served for two years in the Air Force before receiving his MFA in 1957 at the University of Illinois-Urbana. He began his career as a member of the art faculty at Auburn University in Alabama in 1960 and subsequently accepted a faculty position at UNC Chapel Hill in 1964, where he remained until he retired in 2004. He was the recipient of many awards throughout his career, including a first place award in the 10th annual Artists Exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art in 1977. His art has been exhibited widely in the US and is in the permanent collections of such museums as the Museum of Modern Art in Seattle and the Ackland Art Museum at UNC Chapel Hill. See more of his work at Lee Hansley Gallery.