Friday from the Archives: “That Lake, That July Sun” Applewhite Prize Poem by Janis Harrington with art by Kate Nartker in NCLR 2024
Harrington is a familiar name in our pages and has joined many of our live poetry readings, as well as readings around the Triangle region.
Final Judge Meg Day wrote of her selection of this poem for the Applewhite Prize: “This poem haunted me for days. What masterful handling of such slippery subject matter, and with such presence, gravity, and voice. The poet’s choice to use the watery ghost of the sonnet – and the way that question asks both the volta and the reader to perform some impressive rhetorical acrobatics – made reading such a devastating poem feel a little more possible: safe, somehow, but not sterile or at risk of turning too far away from the difficulty of the topic at hand. This poem shows great attention to craft & balances the generous flexibility of foreboding memory alongside the desolation some events carry throughout time, regardless of when they occurred.”
That Lake, That July Sun
You left it here for me to discover,
emptying your house: black-and-white snapshot,
your careless scrawl, Lake Erie, July ’60.
Always shadowy as a fish under water,
an early memory surfaces, caught in a net
of date and place. That stony beach, that cabin.
Perched on the pier, you pose like a model,
strapless swimsuit, legs scissor-crossed. I lean
against you, bangs cut too short, young enough
to need naps. Chest bare, he slouches beside us.
Was it that day his hand sealed my mouth? After,
I peered through that screen door, afraid to go out,
afraid to stay inside alone, waiting for you
to notice it was time to come and wake me.
Get all the award winners in the 2024 issue.
