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Snapshots
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"Surf's up, dude"
Misty rain, an April chill. A Canadian - who's been years in Mexico - says: "Why can't it be hot like last weekend every day? Then we'd be alright." Still, there are pink and yellow shadows under trees, blossom drifts in gutters, neat lawns edged with pink and white where they meet the pavement. Yellow stripes cross my path. I wait for them to turn brown as petals decay. The sun will shine soon enough, today or tomorrow, and surprise us, shooting sap through our veins, a spring in our step. Roger Day I stopped. Across the neatly ordered rows of plants a russet brown creature galumphing towards me. A wallaby? I'd heard of such and this brute as big as a dog. He heard me, stood up, pointed his black tipped ears skywards and stared at me. I held my breath, he twitched his nose. He turned, I followed his eyeline. Another hare, smaller, to the right. As I left, the larger one turned, hopped right. Roger Day *** This is I worry as I scurry down the cycle track: "Do you want people to like you?" "It would be nice to have friends." "Do you like yourself?" "I've got a dungeon master guide I've got 12-sided die..." ...this is I worry as I scurry down the cycle track. Functions names have to be *so* right - initServer morphing into updateServerMetadata Right- and left- drive micro-cars with pretty pretty pretty people all going wheee! "Bill and Ben poetry men stuffed down our throats since 1610." Some days, the traffic noise has to be rejected! This is I worry as I scurry down the cycle track. Cow parsley, lilac - which will go off soon, taking summer with it - hawthorn, yellow-hammers, gold finches squeezed between tarmac and monoculture home for the luckier road-kill. "The rooms were so much colder then My father was a soldier then..." Trucks like Star destroyers, I feel the pull - this is I worry as I scurry down the cycle track. Teak furniture to make that global warning go a little faster! A lone hare sits in a field nibbling at long low regular rows. Roger Day *** The city strode flashy with newly pawned zircon in the sun, cars glittered with chrome and rain through the narrow streets. Frailty of bike gripped the wet tarmac with a whisper of urgency and misdirection. (/Walking up the stairs, my hips too wide for the gate, A shadow's heart, the warmth of a glowing chestnut blossom. / (I rang my father. The sun continued shining. Leaves jutted down to reach me. I deposited the money and escaped. Roger Day I, mechanic, am the bearer of a well-worn monkey-wrench, an armourer with allen keys, a familiar of the toolbox. I have in my paws the grease gouged from a thousand cylinders, the hand-print on a shadow-board primed with a thousand hearts. Roger Day 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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