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Snapshots
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Snapshot: Split Personality
Snapshot: After I wake and the pain's gone. Yesterday, my cheek like knives in spiders' webs, teeth thrumming down to the ground of my being. Now this truce in which I praise mute sleep and Nurofen Plus (tm). What set it off? Well, Sunday I attended the 80th birthday party of my new partner's father. I'm 54 for Christ's sake! Too old to be working up to it for days then falling straight after into the torture hole! Too old to be wanting to hide in the toilet until it's over! Common sense says that it's all in the mind - we blow up the thing until it's a threat even if it's pretty lamblike. But since when did this particular soft machine crank itself with common sense?? Oh well, I live to spend another day in the valley of shopaholism; poor little gewgaws we are, at the mercy of the throb and thrum, still aloft, just, where others were swatted like flies. Norton Hodges Oakham, Rutland UK 10:20 a.m., 7/09/03 My Mother's Last Romance Now she wants me to do what my Dad did - rehearse her symptoms for Dr Singh ('They're always Singh or Patel'), discuss what to pack for her impending visit. Strange how things turn out - my sister gone, me nearly divorced, she now turning, turning to me, the vague boy, always 'away'. Norton Hodges Oakham, Rutland UK. 9.43, 7/23/03 Snapshot: What My Mother Sees She casts a weather eye: Black over there. Might rain. or squints at the Daily Mirror, sizing up Saddam, his dead sons. Later, her look lights on Jude's pots - Is that a penstemon? and the little birds quarrelling over peanuts. Or she just sits and stares. It always comes back to the weather: dark approaching clouds v. sailor blue, the way it must look from up on deck at 84, to a knocked about, wind-blown, gnarly, sharp-eyed, jagged old salt. Norton Hodges Oakham, Rutland UK 9:45 a.m., 7/30/03 Snapshot: My Tabloid Hell Never had a threesome with a Page 3 stunna and her mate in a blizzard of cocaine or a red rose at breakfast in a cut glass vase. Never seen the sun rise in the desert after backpacking all day taut with restraint or arrived home to a surprise shower from fifteen close friends. Never been dwarfed by skyscrapers in a yellow cab with a wise guy driver who voted Bush or romanced by a widow with flagrant designs on my body. Only lived with the Chinese puzzle of an untrusting heart and wavered on the sidelines across the doomed land. Only made a faltering record from short memory, desultory emails and silence. Only hid my face from the moon with a well-done steak, a birthday cake, a few cold ones. Norton Hodges, Oakham, Rutland UK Post-Holiday Back yesterday, the lawn grown tall and the starched kitchen chapel-like; time to sort the postal debris, be glad for no long white sinister envelopes. I miss the sea: one photo, no pebbles this time, just the long beach in my head, the landless moments in silver waves lapping, barefoot, letting go. Norton Hodges, Oakham, Rutland UK, 10:30 a.m. Snapshot: autumnal Snorers should be put on special machines which, when clamped tightly, facilitate a quiet night - quiet night when the moon smokes lazily one foot crossed over the other yellow leg quiet night undisturbed by family klaxons or the calculations of lost sheep (one, two...) quiet night with sky Magrittes of slipper, pipe, dull background, boredom, nothing doing (good) quiet night of blank jazz autumn cool and stepping back to jump again - for when the fog horn starts up on the river and the blocked breather begins her performance art all my noisy ghosts put on their Reeboks and throng yakking past my door.. Norton Hodges, Oakham, Rutland UK, 27.08.03 8:15 a.m. Snapshot: Demographic Radio One We thought we were the electric six, the kings of leon but after the thrills comes the darkness. Radio Two I remember my threads in all their jagger, the dylan loons, the chisel-toed carnaby-red mccartney sharpshooters. Radio Three Upstairs I've still got all the Brahms from my childhood but I threw away my Miriam Makebas, my Ewan MacColls long ago. Radio Four These days, rather than an acid Paxman, I prefer a short story, a play, a news update, a weather report. Soon I'll be ready for Classic FM. Norton Hodges, Oakham, Rutland UK 8:40 a.m. 03.09.03 Time to wear a sweater use the manual override close the curtain fill the kettle again time to curl into that place near the radiator that stops you thinking of the dark and who's out there lost, unbuttoned, last bus gone. Norton Hodges, Oakham, Rutland UK 8:40 a.m. 10.09.03 First you're in a corner - soft and warm, interesting pattern on the carpet, could study it all day (after which there's the skirting boards ), then someone steams in and drags you out, maybe your lover or your maiden aunt, leaving you in the middle of the Axminster, awestruck, blinded by the glory of an Osram bulb. Norton Hodges, Oakham, Rutland UK ,17.09.03. 9:10 a.m 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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