Keep a few LPs
on a shelf in a closet
your favorite groups
your favorite
teenage afternoons
with headphones
singing so everyone
in the house
but you can hear.
Save them
so you can once
in a while slip one
for its jacket
palm hold it
by the edges
like a child’s face
blow the dust lashes
out of the tune
and even if you don’t
have a record player
anymore
you can imagine
reverence placing
the platter
and dropping
the arm down
the diamond needle
into the wide static
silence of the opening
groove.
John Walser’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Spillway, Water-Stone Review, Plume, Posit and december magazine. His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries has been a finalist for the Autumn House Press Prize, the Ballard Spahr Prize and the Zone 3 Press Prize as well as a semifinalist for the Philip Levine Prize and the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. A four-time semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize, as well as a Pushcart and a Best of the Net nominee, John is a professor of English at Marian University and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with his wife, Julie.
Euphony Journal 