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Snapshots
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Landscape
Desire Out of desire no, within desire, during desire, and all its ways. Which ways? fulfilled desire, its smile, and wry effects; the happenstance of its consummation, the rule of its slippery steps, the relief and its sanguinity. Its ache and its final surcease when emotion is motion and the smile turns to sleep. Harriet Zinnes NYC, USA 7/30/03 He Waits Seriousness. Is that elan or elegance or disquiet? The tombs are near, and the prisoners do not stir. It is the silent man on the street corner who is waiting. Waiting? For what is the man waitng? The traffic light has registered so many times and yet he waits. Waits on the street corner and the cars pass and pass. Harriet Zinnes, NYC, USA Taste Them Do not add them to your memory of word shapes. Taste them. Taste them. Words, such as applique, embroidery, batik, pigment. Do not swallow them. Let the lips maneuver them. Let them lie on the lips, but do not bite them Let them wallow wallow wallow. The taste will be the surprise. What will be swallowed will be sound. the memory of sound, the unheard noise of sound. Applique, embroidery, batik, pigment. Harriet Zinnes 11:54 a m. New York City Sand The rust on the window, the spot on the table, but the scent, the scent. Lilacs bursting white and blue, the vases seemingly tilted to hold the petals and leaves. The sun shines through the window and the grass the grass still too green to compete with the blossoming. Is it summer still? Will the rain come again, even as the flowers will wilt and the sand along the seashore will long have lost their footprints. Harriet Zinnes September 24, 2003 New York City 8:30 pm LIKE It is like that but it is a game like that and not and all the same Its essence may change but it is like that and it is not Variation is a scale of being and being is and is not It is like that and it is not Be wary Harriet Zinnes 12:17 pm Snapshot In the meantime music out of time no music Oh, words, where are you so absent in the song Harriet Zinnes In the meantime music Out of time no music Oh words, where are you so absent in the song. Be here. Be here. We will listen. Harriet Zinnes Before Our Eyes Before our eyes and nothing and meaning and pragmatism and the roots of trees the leaves of the flowers the demeanor of the insolent child the worshiper in tears in the pew Before our eyes and pragmatism and ening and the nothing of clouds the rain the snow the leaves Now the door opens the church bells a ringing and the roots of the trees invisible move not before our eyes. -----Harriet Zinnes They Are All There The red-winged blackbirds wild hogs Portuguese men -of- war They are all there but do we see them and if we see them how do they affect our lives? Gecko or crab space the wind a storm the sea They are all there Wilderness, deserts They are all there Skyscrapers fall down. Harriet Zinnes Oil Is it deaths for oil, oh, America, that new found land, overturned burdened by men without vision who speak without compassion that they advocate even as the people behind them voice their money ambitions. Peace it is against war. It is time to hear that call. ----Harriet Zinnes It Is One It is One. It is No one. It is Being. It is Nonbeing. It is Self. It is non-Self. It is. Isness is all. All is isness. Being nonbeing where nowhere where no is where and where is nowhere. Function is fluid. Rapidity is slow Slowness dwindles Time is. Harriet Zinnes *** The Veranda On the veranda with its closed-in stairs you've wandered too close like the children's three bears with your sparkling champagne in the immaculate glass. No, no, I'll walk out the door out the door, out the door out of the ancient French door near the overpass. -- Harriet Zinnes New York City May 25, 2004 *** Modigliani Pontormo, Parmigianino, Modigliani with their elongated figures Mannerists -- long sharp noses, mouths, oh mouths, where is that bare slot, that tilt of the head Renaissance? No. Early twentieth He, tubercular, dead at thirty-five, in 1920. His nudes that shut down his Paris show now luring the crowds. Harriet Zinnes, NYC *** I am not a river. I am not time. I am a body in time that is, in time that is not. The river flows. The blood in my body flows. I am not a river. The blood in my body flows. There is time. There is no time. The blood in my body flows. Time demurs. It waits. The blood in my body flows Harriet Zinnes Sunday, June 13, 2004 12:00 midnight. Poetryetc is a listserv relating to poetry and poetics which provides a forum for poets to debate their critical and creative work. The list has over the years run a number of projects for its members, of which Snapshots has been the most enduring. Every Wednesday, Poetryetc members were invited to post short poems on any subject or in any form they chose. The idea was to make a poetic collage of instamatic “snaps” of that day that reflected the international membership of the list. The project has generated an astounding number of poems. The first two runs, of six weeks each, and the first ten weeks of the third run, are archived at Wild Honey Press www.wildhoneypress.com under Poetryetc Project. The rest - amounting in all to a run of a year - are archived here. Poetryetc, like its affiliate Salt Publishing (http://www.saltpublishing.com), was founded by Australian poet John Kinsella. Salt is managed by Christopher Hamilton-Emery (cemery@saltpublishing.com), while Poetryetc is owned by Alison Croggon (ajcroggon@bigpond.com). Poetryetc is now archived at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/poetryetc.html. and anyone interested can join from that url. To contact the listowner: Alison Croggon These pages are designed, maintained, and hosted by Rebecca Seiferle, the Editor of The Drunken Boat. To email. 
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