THE WRITTEN WORD
The Written Word is a place for local writers to share their articles, stories, and thoughts with News of Davidson readers. Send submissions to [email protected] . Thanks!
Plowed – a Poem by Nora Shepard
NEWS Newton School, Asheville, NC 1956 In the third grade we were very seriousabout contour plowing. We poured overthe artless pictures in our textbooks,inspected the patterns placed before us:the swirls and folds in the badly colored fieldsof our rough...
Forecast, a Poem by Nora Hutton Shepard
NEWS for RBS jr (1936-1997) Can you feel the storm rising out the back doorlike a kettle on the stove building steam,the boil coming up, lid rattling, ready to pour down the sides of the pot, down the windows, streamto puddles on the stovetop, a flood between the...
Ars Poetica – a Poem by Nora Hutton Shepard
NEWS Dear reader, are you here too? looking with me at this room, at that chair beneath the casement and a woman entering from our left? She doesn’t see us, sorting and choosing her woolen skeins. You see her there: the basket’s wide oak slatted handle, the colors...
Thank You, Vasili Arkhipov, a Poem by Nora Hutton Shepard
NEWS October 27, 1962 The world, booked in alphabetical order,lined the shelves of the dimly lit denwhere my brother and I dawdledover grade school homework. I fingeredthrough the solar system, sun flares, red mars,moons and a diagram of Sputnik.My brother was...
Villanelle with An Owl
NEWS Nora Hutton Shepard Acknowledgement: Eclipse What if in the morning the sun did not rise, the moon was stuck against the sky and the barn owl flew behind his yellow eyes over the field mice in their darkened maze of grasses, over the pigs...
Quite Still the Night – a Poem by Jody Seymour
NEWS Quite still the nightdisturbed by starssinging like angel voicesShepherds struggled tounderstand whythe selection was theirs Quite still the nightbut for a knockheard late by asleepy and tiredinnkeeper who hadno room butgave them spaceout back Quite still the...
“It Was Freedom, and Pure Love of the Game: Chasing Fly Balls in Center Field,” a Poem by William Jackson
NEWS Down in Texas, on October 4, 2022, a figure sculpted from steel let loose with his mighty swing into the night... The whole country saw--or re-played the film--Aaron Judge's sixty-second, in sudden, aerodynamic flight. National élan was re-charged--something...
My Imaginary Thoughts About How God Might Feel About the Recent Pictures from the Webb Space Telescope
NEWS Well, I must admit that even I am impressed with what you have created but to be truthful, which I always am, it is because it helps you be impressed with what I’ve created. You say you are peering back in time at that “time” I clapped my hands and it all...
UNC Charlotte’s SDG Club Based on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals
NEWS My name is Mackenzie Smart. I am a recent graduate of UNC Charlotte. While undergrad, I created a club called The SDG Club (based on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals) in March 2021. I had previously participated in the Millennium Fellowship which is...
Channels: A Poem by Nora Hutton Shepard
NEWS When I hold you I want to ask Whyare you named for a river in a landI have never seen? in New Zealand?Your parents named you for what I may never know—but I think I might see that foreign sky in the blueof your eyes, that water dancing its coursewhere...