There was no water at my grandfather's when I was a kid and would go for it with two zinc buckets. Down the path, past the cow by the foundation where the fine people's house was before they arranged to have it burned down. To the neighbor's cool well. Would come back with pails too heavy, so my mouth pulled out
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North Carolina
On December 22, 2014, Shelby Stephenson was appointed the ninth North Carolina poet laureate. Stephenson has authored several poetry collections and taught at both Campbell College and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He will serve as poet laureate until 2016.
recent & featured listings
| type |
name |
state |
|---|---|---|
| Conference | Writers' Week Symposium | North Carolina |
| Literary Organization | Winston-Salem Writers | North Carolina |
| Writing Program | Warren Wilson College | North Carolina |
| Small Press | Wake Forest University Press | North Carolina |
| Small Press | University of North Carolina Press | North Carolina |
| Writing Program | The University of North Carolina, Wilmington | North Carolina |
| Writing Program | The University of North Carolina, Greensboro | North Carolina |
| Writing Program | The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | North Carolina |
| Poetry-Friendly Bookstore | The Regulator Bookshop | North Carolina |
| Literary Magazine | The Pedestal Magazine | North Carolina |
poems
poem
2009
poem
1999
In the moon-fade and the sun’s puppy breath,
in the crow’s plummeting cry,
in my broken foot and arthritic joints,
memory calls me
to the earth’s opening, the graves dug, again, and again
I, always I am left
to turn away
into a bat’s wing-brush of air poem
2013
Fuss, fight, and cutting the huckley-buck—Dear Malindy, Underground, must I always return to the country of the dead, To the coons catting about in the trees, the North Carolina pines Chattering about sweetening bodies in their green whirring? Do these letters predict my
