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Snapshots
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Solitary Walker: Old Song, Overtaken
Under dense light in tunnels already past I am contradiction reflected in beige canopies and the whirring machinery that pictures my sections my skeleton, my country. Outside is undecided heat soup or feathered wind. I take opposites, waver between cloaks use up another wish for transcendence looking for water in a magazine. By a pouting model a sign reads: DANGER VAGUES DIGUE GLISSANTE. Tread carefully, my harbour in vogue myth, slipping at the lowdown of the hill. Time does its cheeky screen dance perpetuates destinations the drag in systems herds me back by rail and jangle. Clouds flatten colour as afternoon resettles in the lift where arrival and departure coincide. There's still flesh in the pencil and a spark over paper and the long dark examines me even in this well-lit place. Jill Jones Sydney, 4.40pm, Wednesday 14 January COMPUTERS computers with their power surges dodgy fuses encodings decodings imput overflows output overflows system errors false functions mismatched bauds countless viruses and more and lots and they have the gall to say try to tell us 'human error' pull the other plug you piles of rusting electronic junk. pmcmanus 10am raynes park uk Frank's Home a gray cat on the edge of a birdbath in the desert Signal Hill a family photo turned into wallpaper "the longer human history petroglyphs suggest" 1/11/04 Frank Parker TOTTEL'S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . wrack my available texts translating subaqueous qualities. Fracas: the miserable idea that comes and remains while longing. A dismissal of traffic as uneventful, though "punk permitted" accidentally what grafts onto the edge. Fractions of ego are already too much; we don't add much. The idea should not be permitted more solidity than that . . . Continuance makes its own future. Please don't think of anything as regressive. Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD USA / 5-?-77, 1-14-03 (8:32 AM) what came down hard ring of icefall clear obscuring all sightlines gone in mottled light scrape scrape to see the drive to miss the other sliding forms & later light reflects the surface tension pavement dark & the bright white flash of snow below Douglas Barbour Edmonton Wednesday January 14 09:15 "Poet's Cat Detained as Illegal Combatant at GITMO" So that's where she went. Not to some Rainbow Bridge (sniffle, barf) but got snatched, stuffed into a carrier box on a flight from McGuire, sent someplace she didn't belong. She'd be happy enough. All she ever wanted, this dangerous terrorist masked as a 15-pound feline Mae West, was for a bunch of human-type guys to grope her. Muslims? Christians? Made no difference, not a bigoted bone in that body. Sometimes we'd call her Madonna Cat lacking only the stainless steel bra. Real life makes me resort to theft, my place to hide: For I will consider our cat Macy For she was the servant of the living God For I perceived God's light about her both wax and fire. For she died Monday, kidneys quit, heart seized. For she and the God she served knew better than we the best way to the egress, For she beat the vet's poisoned needle, For she eluded even our chance to say goodbye which this writing is, a theft to answer a theft, and imperfect as its maker. For she is departed someplace, we hope, even before her time, to where she really belongs. For if Theophile Gautier was right, a soul lived behind those eyes. For it is here now. KTW/1-14-04 Princeton, NJ, 11:15 AM (after Geoffrey Gatza and Christopher Smart) these things happen but in december with a perfectly clean sheet 31 clear postage stamps of space in front of me, middle january looks safe, even possible and on that reckless in retrospect advent day of peculiarly seductive east coast weather i commit to paper to time and energy to an event far enough away to expect myself and 35 others to be there in the same upstairs room and now the feel of advent again the ground blanched before the salt trucks pass the skies fill up with the grey white billowy breath of "hurry home" go to the store, come back prepared remember when i did the great snow dance sleepless at the vigils when snow was as tall as my fourth grade shadow and i knew nothing of the messiness of phone chains, canceling caterers, or chancing work for another equally winter day Deborah Humphreys Newark NJ 7:54 PM SNAPSHOT 38 winter at last my dirty shirt my greasy hair finally my very own & very very winter and all the work remaining awaiting the news yes árni ibsen hafnarfjördur nigh midnight, january 14, 2004 hafnarfjördur iceland 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 Here it's eighty degrees to mystify January there the Maestro winds himself up inside to go full bore as if the last clock-spring has come undone, or a corkscrew pressed too far, or a slinky toy gone out of control down stairs the whirrrr & Alla Marcia, body sweating the brown hair, dampening by camera Ritenuto, controlled to going full forte in Vivaldi's Summer the Al Fine bee crescendo & the back up violinists bowing up bowing down scribbling to swarm into one body, Presto What the the announcer has to say: air outside of Lincoln Center is 10 degrees. Period. Inside glistening plurals, violin hive pitch of Molto spell Ad Libitum, no weather in this wordlessness Chris Murray Dallas, Texas: Wed-Thurs, 15 Jan 04, 12:41 a.m. Snapshot--late, postage-due If you're lucky, they won't charge you the overdue postage on this. But I couldn't afford to send it first-class. And you'll see, I'm sure, that, because I slipped and fell in the snow while trying to snap you, I managed to get only one knee in. Hal-- NYC, 1/14+1, 12:22 AM EST Halvard Johnson 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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