John Walser

Chronoscope 241:  Briefly
January 23, 2022 Walser John

Chronoscope 241:  Briefly

 

Briefly: the glare sun below the clouds
like silver smoke:
a fairytale forest in flames:
briefly: a room of more than shadow:
briefly: I believe we can make it:
ice, snow, the exposed lawn
browning by the day:

 

the countdown to coldest:
the countdown to cracking
like a lake:

 

that groan of giving loose
the fissures through which
cars and people
sometimes fall
and sometimes are retrieved.

John Walser’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Spillway, Water-Stone Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Posit and december magazine as well as in the anthology New Poetry from the Midwest 2017.  His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries has been a finalist for the Autumn House Press Prize and the Ballard Spahr Prize as well as a semifinalist for the Philip Levine Prize and the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award.  An English professor at Marian University-Wisconsin, John is a four-time semifinalist for the Neruda Prize.