SNAPSHOTS
2
so little time
so many infinities
A PoetryEtc Project:
Week Two:
Wednesday August 22
Garbage Truck
with the female robot voice chirping
"back shimas"
& a little warning signal
going pee pee pee pee
& two men
hanging on the rear
dressed like butlers
ready to load the cat-torn plastic bags
ripe in this morning's sun.
Jesse Glass
Urayasu, Japan, 7am
Jacket
After you drive away,
black car curling through
white snow banks and giant firs,
we wave, arms extended,
yours stretched out the window
till you round the last curve.
Honks echo down.
Motor dissolves into trees.
I stand in the road
in silence;
bare aspen and dark firs
reach into coming night.
Boots crunch through snow
on the trail to the house.
Across deepening sky
a hawk calls.
On wood stairs
I stomp off snow, pause,
look out at the silver meadow,
the icy pond,
the darkening ridge.
Inside, I take off my jacket,
hang it on its hook.
My eye catches and holds
the hook nearby,
shining gold and empty.
Layne Russell
Yuba Pass, Sierra Nevada
OVER
a field of golden peat, blandished sunshine. At its border green rushes reach into dappling dawn. Legendary chipmunk is unreturned. Silence at ground zero. You were not here the last time we looked but suddenly your ghost head has risen in a swath of glistering light. So there you are! Creamy grey without a mouth you are filled with speech. All the events this world enstages sound their infinity of horns. A day ensues, passes.
A new now has come. POP! in downfall of photonic frisson you have made another move: Ghosted pod head unfurled into saucered bonnet casts a cylinder of shade within the greater beam of sunflash. You wish more of life than to be admired for your unanticipated appearance. You have arisen and also you have landed. You wish to be taken up by hopeful curious hands into whose bearers' brave souls you intend to enter. You stand blankfresh in your reach of succulent earth. It is soundless over there where you are rooted. A memory of deepest uncharted memory fills the air in the eternity for which you are the monument during the stretched hushes you permit us to share with you. Light that brought you here withdraws its hand.
Richard Dillon
40N26 80W01, Sun in Leo, Moon in Virgo, Waxing Sliver Crescent.
Roar of the cicadas
che che
che che
on this bank of the Hudson, green light in the shallows beyond the trees
leaded eyelids
weary of small fry work
town cafe owner's pickup passing
Susan Wheeler
Rain after weeks of dry weather. Dirt road carved by rivulets. Maples breathing in, expanding. Sweet blind world of forces. Chaos inside the moment. Tomorrow the pods of milkweed will begin their slow explosions. Rain.
Joseph Duemer
South Colton NY, 6:30am
Cold water closes over skin, the first shock of entry. Ahead an old woman who could be me. Pink scalp through fine wet hair. A moment of uncertain scrambling, but she finds her sidestroke kick without looking back at what she cant see. Water carries without consideration movements of the arm transformed into silver air.
Liz Kirby,
Macclesfield Leisure Centre ('Active In Retirement' Session), UK, 3.30pm
In place, but not in place.
What word Wednesday
when its Mercredi,
or not Thursday,
when in Kabbalistic twitch
or synaptic stutter,
it is day's wen,
the week's flat
middling blot
neither poem nor plot?
Not in time, but in time.
What word, what etiology
of Wednesday, Woden, Mercury?
Befuddled in theology,
keelbone to the week's wings.
Michael Heller
8800 ft., Westcliffe, CO, 3.43pm
Part 1
reading Basho while looking at Max Gimblett's Mountains and Text
Six Days in Yamagata. Though I had got to the top of Mt Haguro by June the third, it took me two more days to get to Gongen Shrine. Only those on Gasson and Yudono are as sacred as Gongen Shrine. The moon shines bright with the teaching of absolute meditation, the lamps are lit by acts of the mind. At Gongen Shrine. The whole mountain is wreathed in holy awe.
On the eighth I climbed Mt Gasson. A hood of bleached cotton over my head, rope of white paper around my neck, wrapped in grey mists and cloud, tripping across rock and ice and trudging through snow-- I came out all of a sudden, into the open air, into the cold sunlit air of the summit. I sat down breathless and exhausted high above the clouds. Presently the moon rose. Settling down on a bed of bamboo leaves, I fell asleep. ...
Wystan Curnow
New Zealand, 2.12 pm
Urban fox sunbathes by our picnic table.
Maybe he hopes to meet our urban cat.
Ted Slade
London, 8.00pm
Chessplayers, the Queen
rampant on a King's file,
at the rank, one but last,
defence goes
desperate
and me I say 'mmm'
and 'nice move'
and sudden a face
explodes into mine, with
a you this you that
and useless this you don't know
what you're talking
about (me? what saying?)
and the black rook
discovers furniture, its crevices,
and a pawn falls
onto carpetry, patterns,
like a thought
(we can't spot it)
on form and aesthetics
and Yes I say to me, this is
fear, this is that, that unexpected, this
is primitive couplets,
triplets, singletons, more. ....
and too is Leicester,
about half past the seventh hour
of the night that is Wednesday's.
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, UK
I'm making a plot making it up as I go like a line from the basement in Barrack with the chemical itch of my new shiny hair into the taxi bending under and across flyovers and up Bridge to Parramatta then there's the first big turn and another at Strathfield Car Radio - later I can't help chugging that Turn Up Your Radio riff - and we angle over the speed humps up Kingston and Liberty to the lights and all the right left right left so we can squeeze down the narrow gulfs of Illawarra and straight through Wog City's hustle and maul and doof-doof across Marrickville past the neon club past the station into the street where I got rolled and the kid in the red t-shirt dodging the dark, it looks like him, and taxi gets me there under the lights of Ruby with little change of twenty and ducking through the door into nostalgia TV as though I'm still making up those lines of the songs and one day ... I'll be gone with my taxi eyes and peroxide nights singing "I am The Real Thing" as though the past was a plot, as though you were there once, and believed
Jill Jones
Sydney, Australia, 10.10 pm (the smile on the clock face)
I've done nothing
but there's a
yellow and blue helicopter
circling my garden
so low you can see the man
blanked by helmet and goggles
peering down
with the same heronlike poise
as the machine.
Back again later.
They don't give up, do they?
Matthew Francis
Llandaff, Wales, 4.30 pm
Summer Slipping
walls white floors waxed
new blue chairs tables
alarms have fresh codes
wall calendar waits empty
book boxes stacked
washed windows wide open
sprinkled doughnuts
hot coffee in fancy mugs
teacher meetings no girls
yet.
Shann Palmer (music teacher)
Orchard House School, Richmond, Virginia, 9am
PRIVATE
Delayed Time-delay SNAPSHOT:
"
When I worked for them, maybe twenty-five years ago, we had decent union reps and a solidarity culture (you watch my back and I'll watch yours -- bottom line [and, OK, maybe this wasn't absolutely ideal] was you'd be looking at six months in the slammer, at the worst, covering for your mates. Bastards were blacklegging putting in illicit lines. AND getting paid well more than us poor idiots running the lines. Funniest moment was (this goes back to the early seventies), I was doodling away and I looked up and there was this 18 year old Metropolitan PC looking over my shoulder [sheesh, he even had his hands clasped behind his back Dixon-of-Dock-Green style].
"What's up then, mate?"
"That looks complicated. Bomb warning."
"Bomb warning? WHAT FUCKING BOMB WARNING?"
Then about twenty of us went ballistic simultaneously.
WHERE'S THE BLOODY UNION REP?
(He was about five seats down the isle, trying to explain to three rozzers how you answered a 999 call.)
Fun, them times.
Gave me a taste for non-hierarchial institutions.
(Real problem was overtime -- the older people had this totally sewn up. Not all that serious, as this was the Edmonton [North London] exchange and then, as it was the only automatic exchange in the country, there weren't all that many of us who could work overtime.)
Robin Hamilton
Loughborough, UK
My lunch is wrapped in plastic
made at a university store.
Whipped from a sudden silver service
it's holy cheese in doppelganger mayonnaise.
No longer is my mouth the only consolation
but here I'm bovine-beaked between
bread and half-hour break
Deep into the forest I'm red
from the crinkle in the beetroot
salty from the crunch of celery stick.
Pawed and pampered by this creamy underworld
I am consumer consummated.
Dreamer satiated.
Except, against a lonely snow-pea shoot
I have one more craving in this story
to bring you down with me, dear reader
to the bottom of the poem.
Helen Hagemann
Joondalup Western Australia, midday
wrestling with a nose
a fraction of an inch
a slightly wider eye -
a different person
rub it out
start again
Christina Fletcher
London, 3pm
Two fish in a bowl,
so quiet, so at ease.
Always the flow,
the perfect synchronicity.
Who put the fish in the bowl?
Who placed the water there?
On what table? In what room?
Who will feed the fish?
There was no elegance
in the hands that fed them yesterday.
So functional.
A task? A duty?
Who has named the fish?
The shades are being drawn.
It is evening
The fish. The fish. Where are they going?
Elegant hands hold the silver at the dinner table.
Harriet Zinnes
New York City at home, late afternoon
FORGETTING
The best times
are the quiet times
or the sigh at times like these
half light
half rain
nothing quite entire
or the rambling ease
of the speck in time
that forgets
all the worries
all the cares
just now.
Stuart Eglin
Wirral, England, 12.10am
INSTAMATIC
Bloody hell,
it's Wednesday already
Robin Hamilton
Loughborough, UK
blood red nasturtiums advance
peppering shot
the wattle is wasted
fiery jasmine musters
under airborne pittosperum
the rose bares its thorns
held in reserve
while virginia stock rallys
golden narcissus bow in defeat
mourning camellia's fallen
triteleia's generals star the rear
camp followed by primulas preening
wode-faced pansies police the action
but the bone white freesias
hold the field
Josephine Severn
Pearl Beach, Australia, 8.45am
tiny ice crystals
fill the mackerel sky
with cirrocumulus
and build toward a storm later
on the river
ships pipe 1 pm.
brief crepuscular sunlight
lightens the rooftops
of the nearby houses and I listen watch feel
for the first drops of rain
as the clothes on the washing line
billow in a freshening breeze
the dogs can sense the storm
and hide somewhere indoors
while the garden mower
stands unmoving
I watch from the patio doors
cup of tea in one hand
microphone in the other
it is 1.05
and I can feel the first
drops of rain
Jim Bennett
1 pm
Walked down from the Trowbridge House pub, where we talked of house prices in Bath and the famous people who live here and beforetimes Bram Stoker's sister, whose face inspired Dracula, drank in the pub beside Royal Crescent. Now in the Livingstone pub with its urinal windows I talk to 75- year-old Charles and son Clive who took me on the steam train to the Somerset coast last Sunday. Later at Charles' house I must invite his granddaughter Jenny to 'Shrek' tomorrow. Then to the Englishcombe Inn and Jenny's grandfather Bert and see Cider Joe and poor Little Joe.
Douglas Clark
Bath, UK, 1.30pm
Part 2
Reading Basho while looking at Max Gimlett's Mountains and Text
Next day, on my way to Mt. Yudono, I chance upon the hut of Gassan, world famous swordsmith, hard by the crystal waters in which he tempers his steels. Does he impart to them special powers? What must be onoured is his deep devotion to his craft . Yudono its true has its holy secrets, not to be divulged by pilgrims, however. There are rules.
Wednesday. 2.53
Wystan Curnow
2.53pm
System Snapshot#1
HashSHA1PGPicqMD5defconmQGiBDTuXRERBADGjCC5
whois1eDESkikASP2LAPFCzrdtLF81VgjYRNIIiLx+Xi
FSKVoPJXheosniffthisINSY9qmADMroxRFP:)heh:)
Candice Ward
Midnight
Durham, NC
One more perfect sky
Of seamless blues
Makes the empty offer
Of an endless August,
Only to be given the lie
By the citrus tang
Of another autumn
Hidden in the breeze.
A bright yellow dustcart
Grumbles under my window
Clearing away the dusty remains
Of a summer's broken promises.
Phil Nicholls
Hampton, UK, 8.54 am
blood water semen tears
drinking stout
from a glass
of naked women
The Truth is Frank,
a song and dance man
wrote. All day, turning leaves
Frank Parker
Monterey, CA, USA, 9:03:30am
openings @
1/30
grey sky
grey screen
catch the reflection
light brings the image
home hived
off an out
side chance
of sky leaves
wall of house
colours washed flat
but there
Douglas Barbour
(at my computer: 22/08/01: 09:24)
Alberta, Canada
I apprehend nothing well very little; rumour might leak, hardly anything; it's automatic as parlance. See, one views it all in camera. Most that I witness I do not know. The body delegates to spine and brain; and both behave sub-judice if they respond. They are discreet and cautious. What I see... what I apprehend... separate, slightly but consequentially different, like these sidewalks. Reality between. And there's too much light, my half- shut eyes flickering red inside flashes; stops run out. Look! Try it. Observe yourself. I can tell you insignificancies - brick, sun, breath, wind, life. It lacks any important detail.
Lawrence Upton
Suburban Surrey, UK 10.30am
a hotel slept in unmade head
quick cat stretch into morning
five star silver breakfasting
with old friends soft and nodding
bagged and taxied in good time
to miss first speakers rambling
flashed memory of river stone
distracting
Maria Fletcher
body : launceston tram sheds, heart: elsewhere
Hiccough
Cleveland was born in Loughbouough --
Can you believe?
No. Unlikely. Typical.
Robin Hamilton
Loughborough, UK
A love poem awaits development:
your face, while sleeping
inside the black and chrome
of a Manfrotto.
And just now, a small part
of the narrative, caught
between shower and work:
your face again, in a void,
appearing slowly, coming
into focus on a panel of light
peeled from a Polaroid.
Anthony Lawrence
Tasmania, 7.45am
Voice, it is, with eyes, water's children, and fingers too, here, hearing 's well, that opens them those curtains, uncertain, so heavy they and green, a gift something remembers from Karen, and the outside is still there, oh deity not where, and what there is is the blackshape, the nothing of its descending, plus cars, don't know the makes, me, and lights, they is electric, a prison, one hospital, hairdressers, launderettes, fagshops, chippies, not woodwork as in (all closed them latter at this ungodly hour) while glancing back this frightened thing finds books, tee-shirts, prints, one there is by Kate, naive in style but effective, ash, undusting, a printer once again, and a nerve-bundle realises, wallets, cards, keys, what matters are the outside's I love you's, that say matter does this being, as in some poems as in books ( I can see them, not exactly green one, nudging blue, the other yellow covered) by Al, or Rob, or in yesterday (not yesterday, Monday) not now Safia calling from a white Citroen ( I know that one): darling.
Better now it's told me, that aware finding that.
Phew!
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, 12.01am
Away from home
we turn our vision outward
don't see the flaws
a holiday renews commitment
for a while makes fuck sweat nights steam
while mobile home rocks
to the sound of old tunes
and new ideas
Jim Bennett
400 people and 30 chairs this morning at the Employment Security Commission. Now I'm the only one awake. My legs ache.
Michael Snider
Raleigh, NC 11:50 pm
Well, there is one girl,
always kneeling in the library,
between shelves like pews for giants.
Still, what is our altar?
What might we see on sitting up?
Assuming we get that far -
she sits nearby in my philosophy lecture,
hands declining the foldable desk,
gently sweating in prayer.
I could hardly hear him either.
William Fox
Melbourne University, 11.25am
Part 3
Around the screen (The Face of the Centre, The Poetics of Space, The Interpretation of Dreams-- ( front page: Trinations workout in front of stockbrockers and transvestites, give us a break ( Kant and Freud on Beauty over coffee (in recent memory ( around the screen ( New Widerness Audiographics Sampler Cassette ( Ned Sublette and The Persuasions ( and further along the shelf Live and The Ear ( in recent memory: downpour, sunshine, downpour ( Stories of Artists and Writers, Lyrical Ballads ( before the screen (The painting: Max Gimblett's Mountains and Text ( The Narrow Road to the Deep North ( Around the Screen
Wystan Curnow
3.31pm
sunny park across the street from my window. sunny there yet here i sit
with an electric bar heater on. go figure. this winter is dramatic - long dry spells then record rainfalls: bipolar at best. but air-conditioned people in their air-conditioned cars pass, oblivious to dramas of a universal kind outside their sphere of office gym and cafe machine. even the ayurvedic centre is using marketing tools now. ah, it's a sunny day over there, but here i have the heater on. go figure.
metaphor met before,
breakdancing on the kitchen floor.
wha'for? wha'for? wha'for?
Andrew Burke
Daglish, Australia, 8.40am
