A cloud mast voice a piano I can’t ignore creek water lilt billow seep from the manor house: iridescent as blue votive as fuchsia pollen as vein flames as the dusk of her skin. Velvet leaved I braid the table’s wrought vines to snag a tussle of crows. Fading sunlight through mineral grit storm sediment glass facet divides me: cubist shadows and heat. In the thickening dust somewhere men and women potato drill tiller ride their voices drift stump heavy as lichen weathered headstones drop spud hard and cool to the silt. Soon Blake’s angels will flare against the clouds: soon the pink sirens will turn almost violet like burning gorse. This afternoon in my room I lifted large wings orange and brown as autumn ground to stop the between raised pane and top pane fluster of percussion. An onion skin sky: out the window it arced away twice returning though. Now I follow the darkening thread: the iron back chair the shell shadows a lover’s thumb crease and swirl a hair left shower drain essed bird calls like bent and nail scratched colors. In a week it will be too cold to sit out here even during the day. In two weeks the Midlands air like hammer and string will sound with open pedals. In three weeks I will have to acknowledge leaving. Now though I make myself promises about motion: the chrysalis dormant for years the gentle basement corner refrigeration: how carried in a pocket the furnace of skin powdered wing quickens it like origami unfolded: how in my sleep a flurry of moths lachryphagous with soft proboscises drink from my tear ducts: I breathe my skin. I cleanse my palette: how I have split like silk to perch now upon stone fountain pool orchid petals.
John Walser's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Barrow Street, Nimrod, december magazine, Spillway, Lumina, the Pinch, Dressing Room Poetry Review, Yemassee, Iron Horse, and Lunch Ticket, as well as the anthology New Poetry from the Midwest 2017. A four-time semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize and a Pushcart nominee, Walser is the recipient of the 2015 Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award from the Council of Wisconsin Writers.
