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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Winter 2022
2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY CHARLES DODD WHITE
Wintering Memory is alluvial, you explain. A flood that masks a former shape, An injured spread against a time-torn riverbank. The jealous bones beneath are leached, The pulp and membrane recede on the tide While we have the sump of mud and clay To smooth gaps in a place bent by desire. We coupled in autumn, too late to bear later fruit, Sang one another songs of spring While departed summer kept its brood Imperfectly. Time tricked us, converted us to its Arrangement, certain that wintering would come With the calendar. But days piled up And the burden of what we should carry Together was sloughed off, Moldered and matched itself to the muck Like it meant to shovel us under, Bury us with what wasn’t.
CHARLES DODD WHITE is the author of four books of fiction (reviewed in NCLR 2011 and NCLR Online 2013, 2020, and 2021) and an essay collection, A Year without Months (West Virginia University Press, 2022). Read his short story “Controlled Burn” in NCLR 2010. He has received the Appalachian Book of the Year Award and the Chaffin Award for his fiction. This is his first time as a finalist for the James Applewhite Poetry Prize. He lives in Knoxville, TN, where he is an Associate Professor of English at Pellissippi State Community College.