Snapshot of Loss
I loved the instant
camera, the way
images found themselves
slowly, the way we
had to wait,
the way colors
never were
quite right
Vivian Wagner is an associate professor of English at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. She's the author of a memoir, Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington); a full-length poetry collection, Raising (Clare Songbirds Publishing House); and three poetry chapbooks: The Village (Aldrich Press-Kelsay Books), Making (Origami Poems Project), and Curiosities (Unsolicited Press).
Statement by Featured Artist, Shelley Thomas: This poem reminds me of a Polaroid picture. The description slowly emerges like a chemical reaction producing a hint, a hue, an image. The process is slow and hypnotic, the way a wave shapes the shore, the way morning light ripples on a bedroom wall. Sensing, rather than seeing. And yet sensing, sometimes, is more accurate. The photograph captures the transit of a sunrise through the slow dissolve of frost on a sea-tumbled trunk.
Art: “Sunrise Transit,” 2019 (Blast Beach, England)