All copyright © 2004 remains with the authors.
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Snapshots
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Arcing high over Melbourne I have eaten words all night for years splitting bone and lies enamel dreams my bruised canine is stitched behind my face count them! three knots above the root of ink and troubled pitch of mouth bitten desire pulped fantastic on night's ink where fancy creeps my wolf vision now spit and listerine blood burning codeine prey in throat 12.15am, Surry Hills, Sydney Jill Jones YES! yes! he thought one step one step at a time but which? which foot? foot first? left foot? or right foot? left? right? left? or? ? ? or? yes! he thought perhaps a double foot footed leap and tripped and fell badly very badly badly. pmcmanus 8am raynes park uk birds are returning line by line near the river their shadows gather black and still where water sifts silver on ash ash on silver lovely the creatures of light springing down from cloud to home neither suspended nor in motion brick and wood are things of flame fire remembered and foretold making and ending Alison Croggon, Williamstown, Melbourne, 8.11am 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. huge patches of light - light in its might falling and gliding through the wind seducing and magnified by the intense colors reawaken like the infinite hues ranging from white/yellow/green/blue red emerges distinct mars & sun work made easier if surrounded by tangible beauty still imperative the need to go, see, meet, move be part of the bustling choir of beings be they here now or in history or maybe projected by dreams it is the celebration of natural light stimulating the biology of our cellular life anny ballardini - bozen - italy - 3.29 pm - that bright red dot in the southern sky here memories encoded those first bounding steps my mother reminded me I had spoken of when very young she standing in kitchen unbelieving / yet we watched together those leaps in black & white on TV (soon to thrust further to the nearest planet for sure & this week rather a report on executive failures even the space station slowly sinking while the aging shuttles & imagination sit on the tarmac downed Douglas Barbour, Edmonton, Canada, 08:50 27 VIII 03 Last Night Mars--bloody Mars--rampant over Lower Manhattan--not as dark as some times --Halvard Johnson, NYC, 8.27.03, 11:22 am, EDT Chasing Fireflies The road, to the temples of Mount Hurago, was narrow, slowing climbing upward and flanked by magnificent trees. Trees, that seemed older, that seemed to hold tomes of history, within their branches and leaves. These trees seemed more of everything than the trees of my urban neighborhood. My eyes were plunged, captivated and caught in the scattered light that found its way through the thickness. Small pleasing patches of yellow that illuminated the spirit with the same childish joy of chasing fireflies. I walked with a new born pace, in the place of centuries of soul seeking steps. All those, that had come, before me. Each step, was an anticipation, a discovery of things known and unknown. This is the way, I thought to myself. This is the way we should learn to live, as if the next step will open the gates of purpose and direction. Mount Hurago ~ autumn sun captures a willing prisoner Deborah Russell Baltimore, Maryland Wednesday, August 27, 2003 (Haibun, Reflections on Japan) FOR STAN RICE I cannot even sit on a toilet seat without bad news of mortality. Read Poets & Writers, the intellectual's drekschrift in lieu of People magazine read about the task of editing Stan Rice's last book. Last book. Le Testament de La Morte, Psalms, prefigurations of 9/11, then its afterglow: not of love but of smoking bodies. Thrownback. Memories of "Some Lamb," the first poetry I read that left me quivering wanting, praying to God, to be sick to my stomach to purge the horror from inside me, wanting to kill Death because Rice told me that six years old or ninety-six I stood in line. Kenneth Wolman UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY Paper brushes leg. Hand finds dollar drawn to whirlpool's source. Barry Alpert / "freely written" / Silver Spring MD USA / 8-27 (11:47 PM) memory you dog you train my head tilt & stray whistle quaint damp eye companion you who miss touch firm touch, say, a rail you, today's memory: unkempt sloppy love, care & dry whys what's left is the only eyebrow coat of dust yelp & roll along this suburban sprawl I'll never who-- someone could water an entire lawn while I stride past a faint train's O whistle of who- cares & oil rigging in-out lore your barking O distance Chris Murray: Dallas, TX 10:50 p.m. 27 Aug 03 (For the memory of Veronica Forrest-Thomson) the best cannot manage any proportion: "sufficient unto thy death is the day thereof ... " In slumberland, the ghosts glide driftily .... so long the agony, so long the grief: *such* an enormous sorrow. ... yet another Wednesday, yet another grief (lente lente curite noctes equae ...) wounds dripping from a page torn from a diary -- how long the irony? the grief? Repetition! Finality! Off the edge of the page, Madonna Bones? Sometime, nevertime, everywhen old grief -- too sad, too bad, too long the algebra: it's that cold locus where we once played games. Nevertime as such a time, as that time when -- once again, old chug But ... there was a griefy time I'd have liked to end this in prose, but the harsh lust for rhythm cuts in, inexorable. too sweet. too pure. too clear. I must drift into prose sometime again still, but it's difficult - that long morning on the mountainside ... That long Wednesday which we once called home. Hey, look, don't worry -- I'm alive, I'm living still. Like you, my love, poems to nowhere, no one, {let's write -- not ever seriously, or ever to die for, & don't ever trust this, or ever trust me again: Every which_one, every where/when. 4U my dear est one } RH Dateline/Placetime: Here. There. Neverwhen. (now) ... for Veronica, who was born the same year as me. Robin Hamilton, Loughborough, UK SNAPSHOT 18 sod it! o sod it's overcast now mars is a-close a-rising so red so round so happily drunk there in the east after 60.000 years of neglect somewhere that fart behind those clouds those perfectly useless clouds could see him none the less from elsewhere last saturday caught a plane though back home which he must've missed the fool i did hand him his ticket paid for dearly and missed it that stone-age troglodyte can't even see me now wherever he is and yet i'm shining a biggish red and o so perfectly round on his perfectly clouded blinding horizon Árni Ibsen 10:30 pm, august 27, hafnarfjördur, iceland. 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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