janet st. john

Burned Tree, Western Oregon. Ansel Easton Adams (1902–1984). 1960. Black and white instant print. 11.1 x 8.7 cm. Rights and Reproduction: © Photograph by Ansel Adams. Used with permission of the Trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy National Gallery Open Access. It stood like a cross, corpse, shell of something. A sign of what had blazed by, searing the thin-skinned and vulnerable. Scorch marks, my scars. Bare brittle limbs, my arm

Sidewalk. Janet St. John. 2017 I didn’t know what the cracks represented, nor the lines diagonally dividing this space from that, one step from another. Leaves had fallen, been blown, trodden, cracked, flaked, crushed to the scent of burnt toast and the better side of decay. Some light accidently reflected in my lens. My eyes. My phone. My way of seeing the world. The black and white of it. The gray. Always so much gray. That place to inhabit. The sun shone, filigree through