Ikons Seen Stenciled in Seattle Street Here Censored

This ekphrastic poem emerges from a decades-long fascination with public art, especially street art, and the stakeholder ecology in which it is imbricated. In this case, I viewed the images out of context, curated on a printed page instead of emblazoned on an actual wall, which likely set me off on a more layered hermeneutic quest than traditional field exposure alone might have triggered. Their juxtaposition and the editor’s cropping energized my narrative impulse and prompted an interpretation couched as an aesthetic rather than simply analytic response. Wordplay is a staple of poetry, and I have portrayed my reaction to the murals in a contemplatively playful manner. Poets paint with words, and many of the ones I’ve used are nuanced and polysemous. They mimic the composition and texture of stencils on brick while adding some emotional color to the monochromes. This permits my interpretation to evoke (perhaps even provoke) disparate personal responses across readers. Or even the same reader – myself included – over time. Less a Geertzian gazing at brushstrokes over the painter’s shoulder than a meditative experience of watching paint dry. An epiphany the poet realizes in the writing and invites in the (re-)reading.