G. Frink's

Named by John McCain as one of the three wise men from whom he would welcome advice if he were president, Civil Rights Movement veteran and Georgia congressman John Lewis warned Saturday that John McCain and Sarah Palin are stoking the fires of hate.

In a statement alluding to angry crowds at McCain-Palin rallies last week where shouts of "off with his head" and other imprecations were directed at Senator Barack Obama, Lewis said:

By Emöke Zsuzsánna B'Racz

For Townie New

The storm came at night
with a strength that brought us
outside
to view its largeness, its force.

You, shivering from dampness
I, exhilarated from the energy.

I held my breath
watched as light traveled
across
indigo blue sky.

It is in such moments all is said
without interruption of words.

The light
The moment
traveled
within one drop of water.

Such sadness within joy is what
the experience of love affords me.

• Everbearing by Pat Riviere-Seel.
• Use Your Inside Voice by Glenis Redmond.
• Pear Moonshine by Cathy Smith Bowers.

Back to Four poems from the North Carolina mountains

By Cathy Smith Bowers

For Sue Campbell and Candy Butler

One night, the darkest winter of my life,
my husband not three cycles dead, I
opened the kitchen door to a quiet knock

and there in the starless gloom
of my back porch, two women bearing
gifts. In Candy's outstretched hands

a pot of homemade soup, in Sue's,
fat jar of swollen pears embalmed
in liquid fire. When I reached

to fetch three tumblers down, the two began
to laugh, removed the offending vessels
from my startled hands and returned

them to their rightful place again. Sue
led me to the living room by the hearth
as Candy spun the gold corona

of its lid, drank deep and passed
the jar to Sue then on to me, the ghostly
triage of our lips leaving their own

soft crescents along the rim. Outside
no star had yet to show, no other
moon to light the snow that all day

long had kept me weeping close
to the sputtering flames. We drank
and passed the waning jar and drank

again until the glacier of my pain
began to break, a thousand icy floes
drifting down the river of my grief

and then we ate the soup.

• Everbearing by Pat Riviere-Seel.
• Use Your Inside Voice by Glenis Redmond.
• The Storm by Emöke Zsuzsánna B'Racz.

Back to Four poems from the North Carolina mountains

By Pat Riviere-Seel

The garden demands constant care.
I grow sweet corn, pole beans, and carrots.
Garlic I plant on the coldest day,
harvest on the hottest.
I obey the moon.

In spring my footprints sink
into newly ploughed ground.
Mud clings to my soles.
Cool mornings and late afternoons
I hoe weeds. Every day, more appear.

I harvest the bounty, blanch and freeze
for the season when rows lie fallow.
Winter, the garden remains
in my hands.
Seed catalogues arrive:
I know if I do not work this patch
the brambles, thistle, and grass
will claim what I can not contain.

• Pear Moonshine by Cathy Smith Bowers.
• Use Your Inside Voice by Glenis Redmond.
• The Storm by Emöke Zsuzsánna B'Racz.

Back to Four poems from the North Carolina mountains

By Glenis Redmond

Down the dark tunnel of throat
in the threaded jungle of larynx

what if what is waiting is not humble
like a lark in a darkened cubicle?

what if what is waiting is perched
on the breath like the ragged bark

of a crow? Not with a small cry
but a crimson caw bleeding into the horizon

like a terrific song filling the hush
with lungs, flared in full wing.

• Everbearing by Pat Riviere-Seel.
• Pear Moonshine by Cathy Smith Bowers.
• The Storm by Emöke Zsuzsánna B'Racz.

Back to Four poems from the North Carolina mountains

Four of Western North Carolina's best poets: (left-right) Emoke B'Racz, Cathy Smith Bowers, Glenis Redmond, Pat Riviere-Seel.

Photographed by Rimas Zailskas.

Read a poem by each of the four poets pictured on the cover of the current issue of Verve, a western North Carolina magazine for women, and who are featured in the article Poetic Justice.