WHAT IS SEEN: VINCENT STREET

Snow takes the color of sky
takes the shadow of houses
takes the print of tussle squirrels
that loop and chase:
 
the sky curdles blue
the orange refraction underbelly
of clouds:
it has formed and fallen
congealed and burned away
blizzarded only to gloss
again and again today:
 
the barely warm enough starts to drip
when the barely sun enough shines.
 
Out my window all week:
so very little movement
except the windthrash limbs
of the snowheavy lilac
the snow lumps blown
from the arbor vitae, the roof edge.
 
But the window screen creates
a painting exercise:
 
to see through a grid the whole:
 
to trick the eye: to trick the brain:
to trick the hand and brush
and pigments:
 
and if I hang by my feet:
like a seized star bound to escape:
Vincent Street upside down uncertain:
 
each small square adds up to how
what once was mold and figure:
tree root: footstep: flowerpot:
clapboard: elm bark:
becomes the implication
of what was.



John Walser, an associate professor at Marian University in Wisconsin, holds a doctorate in English and Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Nimrod, Spillway, The Pinch, december magazine, the Superstition Review, Fourth River, the Normal School, and Bird’s Thumb, as well as in the anthology New Poetry from the Midwest 2016. He was a featured poet in September 2014 at Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. A Pushcart nominee as well as the recipient of the 2015 Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, he is a two-time semi-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. He is currently submitting three manuscripts for publication. His manuscript 19 Skies was a finalist for Trio Press’s 2016 Trio Prize. His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries was a finalist in the 2016 Autumn House Press Poetry Contest.