Out from a line of fire,
into these entanglements
of coastal scrub,
this largesse of flower
branchline and shifting
abrasive light,
a dune bird stops its mouth
with a scribble of acacia pollen
and a potoroo grooms the flank
of its own standing shadow.
Here, in the scaled-down
topography of the moment,
in the economy of depth
a stroke of oil locates
on paper or skin -
those skylights into the head
the crafting of spittle
and blood has made luminous,
the puzzle and the broken code
of pure amazement
have taken root, and they are flourishing.
Out from a line of fire,
our bodies move,
and light is what we leave
in the essential landscape
of our absence:
a yellow-tailed black cockatoo
going out of its head,
a woman whistling
a mongrel from the surf,
and in the middle distance,
in sepia tones, a small marsupial,
removing a splinter of ash from its pocket.
Anthony Lawrence
Tasmania, Australia, 11.06 am
SNAPSHOTS
4
so little time
so many infinities
A PoetryEtc Project:
Week Four:
Wednesday September 5th
im wringing & tangling
its
its my fngrs are knotting
so im laughing
shaking
breaking you in
ive turnd pink & around
you & th wind behind me
whispering; blowing kisses
ea. c.
Brooklyn, NY, 3.29pm
A little arch of brick in late afternoon shadow, adjacent leaves shimmering
in open air, shine on windows, bubbles in a glass of pop.
In the arch, a green climber clings in powdery mortar.
A woman laughing, head thrown back so far, mouth open so wide, she must be cackling, dressed in white, cheap gold upon her ankle.
The man is not laughing. He leans towards her with an inclination of his
back, sunlight in his close-cropped hair, a smug grin, the eyes dilated, most of his tongue across his lower lip; and the right fist clenched.
Lawrence Upton
The sky cool as a gravestone
Above a cluster of slate-grey roofs
Rarely visited by the sun
But laden with memorials
Signifying the risk of
Living.
The street covered with old moss
Slimy and devious as a water snake.
Two green steps simple and solemn
as those of a gothic altar.
The steps became endless
Each representing an hour.
Sufficient potentials are laid at their foot
As one stands on their certain granite.
Erminia Passannanti
Oxford, England, 10.30 am
ROUNDUP
(taking advantage of local color)
"Mr. H., see your last few Wednesdays
languishing in the corral?
They have foot in mouth disease."
"I know, they wax a bit poetical,
is that what's wrong?"
"Yes, it's the damn flab, too wordy
to billboard, too obscure to show
honestly to schoolkids. Are you
some kind of fop or New Yorker?"
"What do I do with the things?
They took only a few minutes
but I'm sort of attached."
"Gosh, I didn't know you was
a Wednesday lover of verbiage.
We'll keep 'em penned up, see
if they slim down a bit. If
the're no takers, we'll stampede
them out past some gathering
anthologies near Iowa or Buffalo."
Michael Heller
Westcliffe, CO, US, 4:27pm
I go into Dr Marlowe's office. He is signing me off from Psychiatry and transferring me to my GP after more than twenty years of supervision for schizophrenia. I explain that my only symptoms nowadays are my bipolar depressions but they only last four or five days. I just stick to my routine until I snap out of it. I explain that I build my life on routine and stick religiously to it. He asks me if I have any worries. I do not tell him about the blackberry spikes in my overgrown back garden which haunt me. Now back home for tea then I will head for the pub.
Douglas Clark
Bath, England, 4.10pm
a place
rain come in swarthes
estuary
hills barely visible as spits of orange lights
then
stillness with darkness
a holding of the breath
before
the slip into night.
tense now
why can't the voice extend?
say the innocent?
repeat the desperate?
say what was meant?
willing the thoughts to rise
lift with lightness
settle
as the tide flows to and fro
as often as at will
rain now let go
this place.
Stuart Eglin
Heswall, Wirral, England, 10.40pm
The water is crystal clear. The baby stretches
Towards me his chubby hands. I see the other half
Of his pale body swirl submerged in a turquoise film.
Against a screen of light his slippery skin glows fresh.
I holds up his arms in a bright mist.
Young legs pass by making the sea-foam swash.
The girl bends towards the child and talks to him.
Her long brown hair skim the water surface.
Her mouth of mother of pearl
utters soft words of surprise.
I lifts the child and make him bounce
In and out the water. The girl enjoys the game.
The day is like a big plastic ball
Smooth and transparent like Leda's eggs.
Erminia Passannnati
Oxford, England
Abrupt change in the seasons
at "Tokyo Disney Sea"--
A lone man takes a digital
picture of himself
holding the camera
against the autumnal
blue. Shop keepers throw
pails of steam on the sidewalks
while trumpet blasts of pop & classical
hybrids lard the air from speakers
hidden among the shrubs. To my right
a colossal plexiglas globe percolates
with tons of salt water siphoned
from Tokyo bay & the globe
like an inverted fountain
periodically evacuates itself
with boom enough to scatter the pigeons
& spin the heads of the tourists
who are lining up to arrive. A boy
chases two fat red dragonflies
stumbling down the air. His mother
gestures like a drowning girl
for his return. Already
grounds keepers are sweeping
up the sunlight into little piles
& the Japanese are buying Mickey-tainted
tea-towels and other Mickey things.
Jesse Glass
Urayasu, Japan, 9.30am
Grey, again, the island's sky, and moody,
like a history, could be England's,
and umbrellas popping up
like a boom in tulips, that's Dutch,
( a scent of trade wars)
and memories skiffing through the mind's
eyes that see this translators
not to be understood anyhap
the language that brawls in me
here to be happening that names it:
breath. That under lives
these, eyes.
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England, 12.17pm
Cold morning. Birch leaves' yellow reflected in the river. The hound raises
her nose reading the air; the terrier tears around nose down reading the
earth. I go in, make coffee, read the paper.
Joseph Duemer
South Colton NY, 7.32am
the yellow light of evening when you are around it
like a cowl of arms so mothering so fastly
breathing there is barely time for eyeblink or the
caught rag of gesture black against windowlight
a child who'll remember this once a baby and now
reaching into adulthood but not as you already are
nostalgia seeping through
your flesh with its death already happening
woven around you a cloak of feathers blurring
now's terrible poise
Alison Croggon
Melbourne, Australia, 9.56
4 shots in 1
1.
We're running rails as weather coats
skins, shirts, place names
how hard is speech and soft these wind tears
coating myself, an endless manufactory.
Each field empty as we pass
white lines, lone goals and stands
surrounded by grey light, block housing, carparks
each announcement calling us forward, duties and placements.
Opposite they both, busy with paper craft
dig in pouches for Drum, lick and roll Tallyho
ready to laugh when it stops and the doors let go.
There is no great plan beyond this
and if there is news from somewhere
it plays ever the same changes
and timetable advances.
Marrickville to Central Station, Sydney, Australia, 9.15am
2.
The future glides in, big passenger wings hopping down layers of cloud
wash, air space. In a carpark, way over, glass full of light as a gull
turns above bare trees and the memory of harbour salt floats, the lilt of
traffic, the wash of air conditioning, the tug and pitch of phone talk, the
urge for walking in the blue sky afternoon along the sea of coming and
going.
Surry Hills, Sydney, Australia, 2.45pm
3.
Buskers fold as the rush hour arcs
I keep walking against the happy birthing swarm to exit-land
my way is through a warm glazy halo of yellow green tiles
amateur straggling murals mimic the jolting frieze of homeward crowd
keep on walking, the guitars are out of tune
keep on walking, the new plaza is grey
this is where the tunnel emerges and twists
this is where the rain might fall
this is where a light dusk is lowered on Railway Square
keep on walking
across the blind traffic of Broadway
across the hour into night
Devonshire Street Tunnel, Sydney, Australia, 5.30pm
4.
'don't you know your life'
this chorus, the iron gate opposite
cars, brakes, the gutter
roll of wheelie bins, dog talk
farewell ghosting of chatter
jet bulk on curfew
stars scattered above the hill
music runs on, chimes out
'don't you know ...
... your life'
last night alone, jazz into sleep.
(song quoted 'Your Life' by City)
Marrickville, Sydney, Australia, 10.55pm
Jill Jones
Diableries
The stairs wobble.
The ghosts disappear.
Still, soft footsteps.
The wind does not blow.
The rain does not fall.
Only the birds sing.
Always diableries.
I hear thunder.
Lightning is quick. It passes.
Happenstance.
Always happenstance.
It is no wonder that the deer walk slowly
and the coyotes on the mountains stop and wail.
What will you do when the boars come?
There is no rifle in the house.
Ah, you will be listening to the birds' song
near "a river at my garden's end."
Harriet Zinnes
New York City, US, evening
the blue glass bowl
turns light into cloud pictures
on the kitchen table
waiting for the kettle to boil
watch the steam turn
against the ceiling
tap drips
as kitchen boiler
bubbles into life
Monty sits up
waiting for my hand
to reach for his lead
outside
flowers bloom in the rain
bags of peebles
wait to look like
something Japanese
Jim Bennett
H. Zinnes's latest poem is marked by her usual attention to an ease and
gently insistent quality of phrase bordering on the laconically vernacular,
bearing simultaneously the clear signs of what an earlier age might have
denoted sibylline insight. In its lst momentous appearance in an email,
Zinnes characterized it as "a little verse, nothing more"; this is a
chartacteristic evasion, of course: our text is rich in sibilant echoes,
premonitions, and surrealistic conflations, such as the charming one that
has "coyotes wail" or "no rifle in the house" in a distinctly Arthurian or
Brythonic context, a touch of humour redolent of this writer's wry perspective
on her material (see also "wobble" in the first line!). To meet a Steinian
pioneer, as it were, in such a haunted elfin world -- but one frequented by
the mythical wild boar -- is to sense with the shock of recognition the
bloody traces of "nature red in tooth and claw." Brythonic or Arthurian
it is, however, to the wonderment of the poem's alleged recipient, learned as
he is rumoured to be in the "matere of Britayne": with considerable aplomb
this epic cum lyric jewel adumbrates the story of Yvain, the "chevalier au
lion" of Chretien's tale who ends up mating with the "mistress of the beasts"
(as Marija Gimbutas would have it). Most striking points of resemblance
are the lines indicating the presence of birdsong while "the wind does not
blow" and "the rain does not fall," reminiscent of the moment after the
thunderstorm at the Lady Laudine's fountain provoked by the hero's
sprinkling of boiling spring water onto a miraculous stone, when the most
marvellously sweet chorus of infinitely varied birdsong bursts forth. No
wonder that for a later piously Christianized age this might have appeared as
"diableries", in another touch of Zinnes's inimitably puckish humour, though
she typically disclaims responsibility for this term by attributing it to the
author of the mail to which hers is said to have been a response -- (this
personage's existence is left by the author [?] of these lines to the gentle
reader's judgment, if such be forthcoming.) The following reference to
"thunder" and "lightning" that "passes" confirms this impression. It does
indeed pass. The next lines refer in a mischievously "western" manner to
"happenstance" before seguing into walking deer and wailing coyotes and,
after the apt query, "What will you do when the boars come" (bridging
times and cultures) the mocking "There is no rifle in the house." Here we
are back in the present-day US, and the poet continues with her trade-mark
"Ah" (no other poet manipulates this expostulation more cunningly) to
conclude with the timeless yearning of "you will listen to the birds' song"
near " a river at my garden's end," a phrase that pregnantly recalls
both "where the rainbow ends" and "journey''s end," the river being both
illusory (thus the quotes) and that stream which is ferried o'er by Charon or
crossed by means of a bridge in Celtic folklore and "at the end" of our
Paradise Garden. This poet's amertume is always tempered by the
douceur of nostalgia.
Martin J. Walker
Late evening, stars framed with shadowed trees, moonlit
flowers in shades of grey. A cuppa on the back verandah, a
rustle high in the bottlebrush, a torch flashes. Discovered,
covered in light, light tail spiralled around a branch, ring
tailed, tiny possum. Higher, a mother exits stage right
onto the neigbour's roof. Following close, tiny child possum
with unfurled tail rigid in balance scurries after. Large
eyed, diminuitive, sharp teeth. White bellied. Spring.
Josephine Severn
the geese fly and call
through pink morning
escorting me
from one dream into
another
I listen
not wanting to miss
anything
they leave a trail
of tiny white roses
falling
Layne Russell
Bought a ZX80
Day before Sinclair brought out the 81
Pass me a C5, I'm a hungry man.
Robin Hamilton
(Sometime west of Wednesday,)
night swimming with mike stipe
~ (or how to choose the right track while driving.)
She always drives with one particular compilation
On perpetual play.
Yes, someone had convinced her that one day, she too would die;
Not yet, not in this way,
Not in this cold obscurity,
With no fine music on her lip,
She was too good too good too good,
She simply would not die a soulless passive anything,
Just listening to this crazy talk back venom;
Not in spring,
With the twisted heat of metal plunging into sun kissed skin,
Not with the sound of hate the last real music she would hear,
So R~E~M and Mahler spin;
The choice, the inspiration, quickly burned, in preparation
For the journeys she might take,
This chosen shot of music her familiar.
With Mahler dead, it's easy,
To rip the soul, adagio, from its final symphony.
With Mike Stipe, he's still singing,
Still performing, still night swimming,
Still lyrically passionate,
With all familiars missing.
So which is it to be?
What is the way to live?
With the familiar, without choosing,
Or is there something more
That she's not hearing?
Someone tried to tell her ~
It's impossible to play air guitar
While travelling a well worn highway.
Well, she thought ~
Just watch me.
Maria Fletcher
Listening to "Sweetness Follows" REM, Midland Highway, Tasmania
Sorry, I had another snapshot this morning.
Snapshot
the two lay one against the other
on the grass and smile
In a posture not as solemn as that
of the pharaonic couple at the Metropolitan
but rather more mundane and almost infused with greenness
for the quality of the beam on their relaxed faces
the elbows softly pressed against the fresh lawn
their skin touched by a shade of amber as after a long summer
their shoulders slanted as beached sailing-boats
and the glance fixed ahead in the same identical direction
as to establish the code of this is who we are
here we are and here you will find us from now on.
Erminia Passananti
Oxford, England, 4.23pm
a fat six-inch slug crawls
across the bathroom floor
*I almost left the light off*
my husband worked all day
fifteen hours in the heat
I wake him to kill the thing
offering salt and a zip-lock baggie
he manages creature control
I clean the floor
*snapshot*
a working relationship
Shann Palmer
Richmond, Virginia, 4.15am
I have climbed all day
through mountains of paper
sunshine speaks through pines
students are at the café
getting greasy hands from paper
some dine alone
I planned a celebration with a famous author
that is now undone, no fault, no one to blame
it was fine to be lost in the celebration
visions of smiles at the cottage door
a car wending its way
like some learned gesture
into the amber light
people leaning, nibbling cake
shoulders in another room
fixing coffee cups, lifting forks
to fame a novelís worth
then those tiny lights began to flicker
wheels began to grind
fate rocked its sinister song
and the Ferris wheel stopped
Helen Hagemann
Joondalup, Western Australia, 9.00pm
I can see:
Nothing, and beyond that
Nothing again
like cloud ridged upon cloud
(it must be
something like, whatd'y'm'call it?, 5 am)
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England, 5am
'last night alone, jazz into sleep.'
jill jones
fanned heat irritating my skin
shrivelled arm itching
all night like a persistent rumour
jazz nights dull reprise
in memory's biobox / sleep
the usual ghost-train ride
smile muscles sneer
at the mirror / image
reflecting on itself
'what'd ya say, boy?
what'd ya say?'
a skeleton with attitude
Andrew Burke
Daglish, Western Australia, 10.55pm
Romantic country weekend
the rolling hills of our thighs, lips, face, hands and feet
tactile inhibitions set free
Helen Hagemann
Perth, Western Australia, 6pm
tripoded stoptime
aimed high
moon lights
the pear tree
darker against dark
against other dim distinctions
small pears silvered
almost glow
grown larger
this year
in the long
dry sun
Douglas Barbour
Edmonton, Canada
The sky cool as a gravestone
On a cluster of slate-grey roofs
Rarely visited by the sun
But laden with memorials
As a memento of the risk of
Living.
The street covered with old moss
Slimy and devious as a water snake.
Two green steps simple and solemn
as those of a gothic altar.
The steps became endless
Each representing an hour.
Sufficient potentials are laid at their foot
As one stands on their certain granite.
Erminia Passannanti
Oxford., England
PAUL BRACH'S "DARK CENTER"
Restraint
against
action strokes
a
surface grid
of
squares.
I've subscribed to the "snapshot aesthetic" in photography for 24
years. My text "Paul Brach's 'Dark Center'" adds a "fast" percept to what
my camera might do with the paintings themselves.
Barry Alpert
Silver Spring, Maryland, US 10.55am
