56
2012
NORTH CAROLINA L ITE R A R Y RE V IE W O N L INE
number 21
Swimming by the Bridge (acrylic on canvas, 38x31) by Jane Filer
The Fish Boy by John Thomas York
Finalist in the 2011 James Applewhite Poetry Prize Competition When I felt the whirlpool, the suck of my parents’ ship sinking in slow motion, I didn’t splash or yell for help. I believed I could live underwater, the mermaids’ darling. I grew scales on fingers feet elbows ankles, a spreading fishiness up to my eyelids, eczema’s crust a red burning under white flakes. Some days I feigned a fever to stay home. But nothing hindered my progress as I swam through nights of insomnia, moon lowing like a fog horn, then the sun ya-honking like a ferry rising into the blue. I was the fish boy – hooked – jerked out of the water by bully teacher friend, I gaped mute as a flounder in a world shouting bright.
John Thomas York won the first James Applewhite Poetry Prize. His winning poem, “Lamp,” will be published in NCLR 2012. York was born in Winston-Salem, grew up in Yadkin County, and now lives in Greensboro, NC. He is the author of a chapbook, Naming the Constellations (Spring Street Editions, 2010) and a full-length collection, Cold Spring Rising (Press 53, 2012). Hear him read his winning James Applewhite Poetry Prize poem, “Lamp” at the 2011 Eastern North Carolina Literary Homecoming.
JANE FILER has an MFA from UNC-CH. Her work has appeared in such periodicals as The Sun and NCLR 2011 and is included in private, corporate, and museum collections state- and nationwide, as well as in Europe and Asia. She taught painting and drawing for over twenty years at the Carrboro Arts Center in Carrboro, NC, where a studio has since been named in her honor. See more of her work on her website and in the forthcoming print issue of NCLR 2012.