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Snapshots
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SPECIAL TREAT feeling generous and for a special treat this year she decided that he would not have to go on holiday with them let him off the traditional family trip the stinking airports surly taxis lost tickets- missing passports delayed cooped up cattle packed flights skin cancerous beaches appalling hotel food ghastly drunken all night partying rowdy neighbours and and let him stay in his shed on his allotment with its excellent cool wine cellar cordon bleu lunches delivered to plot 137 by chef giovanni and enjoy the peace in his comfy lounger lulled by the strains of his favourite baroque music birdsong and golden sunsets glass in hand content pmcmanus @ beeson devon uk 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 Dream House House Open for Inspection, a big builder's demo-house you find the land, we build your dream house all glass and pastel panels. The wife stays in the car, too tired to look. Please take off Shoes to Protect special Floor surfaces. (Shouldnšt special mean unscratchable as well as smart?) Opening the front door activates a recorded voice: Welcome to our new-century dream house. Observe the raked ceiling, etc. I turn to inspect the grand front rooms, all so tasteful. Oh, herešs the man on duty, to chat me up. Just looking, thanks. Twenty-seven different colours, he proudly mentions, then leaves me to it. I drift smoothly in my socks to the picture windows, the pastel sofas, the creamy shelves awaiting one's favourite books, the widening at the back to the open-plan kitchen, the family space, and to one side the new necessity the home theatre, already with big screen showing dream houses to a voice-over caressing me with up-to-dateness in pastel tones. The back garden has an oversized "water feature". Upstairs, fondling the warmed metal banister, to bedrooms worthy of royalty, and a voice saying: note the raked ceiling, the panoramic vista, the extra lounge space easily converted to a fourth bedroom. Bathrooms as in some luxury hotel, creamy shelves, cupboards, walk-in wardrobes, thoughtful concealed lighting, ventilations-- I breathe in perfumed air, breathe out sighs. None of this is meant for me. Home to a waiting pile of essays: on the top, Emily's: shešs chosen Keats, Coleridge, Whitman, brave girl! Topic (from Auden): "a poem that attempts to follow the motions of consciousness will have to organize itself into a whole in ways which consciousness itself suggests, not as logic dictates." Išm hopeful she has felt her way in to Kubla Khan, the Nightingale, Song of Myself-- not too logically. What's this? - "a psychoanalytic model"! Emily! Must you? Some recent "Introduction" has told her the conscious self is only "the tip of the iceberg". I freeze up, too tired just now to look. Later I find Whitman's soul is really his unconscious. In Balwyn North do Condo Builders stately homes construct. And hereabouts in air I too will build my home, piping words that paper every elevated room. Darkling, I will project a garden full of singing birds with word-spring jetting, and coloured lighting. A charmed magic basement will house my whole sole self. 7 am Wednesday 23 June 2004 Max Richards, North Balwyn, Melbourne [And from another essay: 'Every poem was like a tiny micro chasm...'] el di/a de san juan (for my good friend Petra on this vigil) legend has it an answer to most "inquietudes", questions in their serpentine forms and indigestions "ce/n fath", "por que/", "co/mo" "conas ta/" the recipes for seducing the sun to stay as long as possible the beloved to emerge from the sea from under the pillow of dreams to listen how the rosa of lima belongs to san german and the little-known san patricio beats out san blas in the race to rid "borinquen" of the unwelcome "hormigas" and bugs tonight, the vigil the druid on the hill milagros down the street in the breaths before her "quinceanera" and at night prayer i'm thinking about the beautiful bonfires i long ago saw in the city shaped like a tea cup reading the leaves the cartographer's symbols Deborah Newark, NJ 10:18 pm council trees trimmed back to their brown knuckles the public carpark makes way for more cars the panel beater warns Beware of Vehicles ... yes they can own you take your money drive your life Andrew Burke Mount Hawthorn 23 June 2004 Diverse collage If you surrender details they gather "a portion of the beauty" in blue suburban clay. In a clouded space room to step shadows where wind falls under the sun. Ways you still hear the grass strata, fine planes, slips of craft. But light leans in from the left expecting more than another opinion. What do you need to know to walk land along the lines of its wounds. Nothing is beyond question. Jill Jones, collaged after Art Gallery reading, Sydney, Wed 23 June 10.28pm what bird this is I do not know but that a rusty hinge outside the door screeches once, & once again, & then once more begins at dawn far too soon then all day long that sharp grinding sound creaks out from hidden branches thus unseen but not unheard the cry to cringing ears compels Douglas Barbour Edmonton 08:30 Wednesday June 23 2003 PAINT JOHN CURRIN any differently, I think about myself almost all day long; news day in history to monkey with the eyes. OWL [via Chris. Marker's "Bestiaire"] Who()(s)(e) who? Laissez-moi, owl. Center owl & pussycat, not mall owl not. LOUISE'S PANDORA Long way, old garret. I'd have run away. LOUISE BROOKS' DIARY Leaving, today, of all, days. Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 6-23-04 (10:58 AM) fatigue the longest day ends pink- skied falling into the dark crevasse whatever vehicle brought me here is lost or won't start or has no brakes grey concrete engulfing even the foxgloves even the budding lily Sharon Brogan Salvation city streets - beyond credits and liner notes the beat of a heart is a drum rhythm machine whip-rides, tides that rise, fall twist unexpectedly we feel profound even in the verses of rocky movements we dance on the slippery edge of time looking for someone or something to blame to feel solace, if not salvation even from ourselves Deborah Russell, Baltimore, Maryland USA 06-23-04 - 1:26 pm It was three years ago when all those working at the court of justice / here round the corner / signed a petition sent to the mayor not to cut the old beautiful firs / at the four corners of the square under which they were building a parking space they came at dawn trees and saws screaming we all woke up to listen / as if our lives had been shortened and still talk of the trees / when we meet Anny Ballardini they said the trees might fall and take the dike down with them all the willows, the birches even the ancient cottonwood young eagle's perch gone from the river Sharon Brogan She's been avoiding me for months, the stooped elf-woman who lives next door in her mother's house, her mother now buried. Never-married, hair close-cropped and Groucho's eyebrows without the irony. But eyes startling, like Liz Taylor's. A nervelet, she rakes for hours -- the sound of sycamore leaves skittering, nervous as an introvert's hands. Hostile, back and forth, coiling a question that's meant for effect, not to be answered. When I meet her blues over the crumbling wall, it's all nicey-nice from me, all how'dos and cooing for grapefruits bigger than fists. And she never looks at me, but plucks a stray dead vine (mine) from the wall (her dad built) and says for the umpteenth-ever time she wishes I'd take down the eucalyptus that hunches its raw back against her wall (again, her dad built it from bricks and mortar and, one imagines, blood). _See the cracks_. She traces with a dirty glove and the eyes are downcast but roil fiercely in their net of lines. _Or maybe the lady who buys your place_. Suggesting there's always one who comes after, a parade of haughty women with overblown curls and overgrown trees that drip wisteria and jasmine like laughter upon her. Jennifer L. Lesh 23 June 2004 Bakersfield, Calif. A CANVAS TO BE THROWN AWAY The fat neighboring Lady with Red trendy shoes is vivisected in the center of the canvas she's of late adopted a soaring allure walking as nothing but Christ himself instead of on water on stable pavement her inevitably devastated skin due to old age cannot be hidden behind the sticky bombed-combed blonde hair adiposity of her vicious sedentary life rolls over sweaters and pants as a jellied greaser & the XXL military straight jacket cannot contain what she wishes shouldn't be seen in an unavoidable close-up her mouth used only to kill people in their backs is stressed by the tongue retraction of a pig-nosed frog over-elongated because of its direct intrinsic instinct running parallel to the horizontal axis of her deformed shape, that is her tongue and nonexistent lips cut through about 1.5m wide at 1.7m height from the ground she is coming from church and imbued by what she thinks people easily believe tries to transform herself into the _Madonnina_ that is the Little Holy Mary you can hear her stubbornly repeat: _I am the Madonnina_ and here flashes a tiny figure in mid-air all rarified light blue witch of witches the bubble crashes when curious eyes focus on the disgusting moving boulder capable of creating temporary poltergeist images. Anny Ballardini The Neighbors Debate When discovered by the social worker, the yellow rabbit was nibbling blooming dandelions, violets and clover on the neighbor's lawn. The growly, circling cats did not disturb it. The rabbit hopped up to the cats and touched twitchy noses. The cats dashed, lickety-split, and dropped into hunting-jungle-tiger poses. The neighbors schemed. Chased & caught & caged, unperturbed, the rabbit washed its face. The prison guard said "Let it go." "Not wild," the social worker warned. "And think, the child who lost it, crying all night," the day-care worker sighed. The rabbit combed its hair. -- Sharon Brogan VIA RIPA A film memory: Monty Wooley, imperious impersonation of the critic Alex Woolcott, wheeled into a room of admiring rubes, looking about, stroking his beard, saying softly "I may vomit." Our house is on the corner. Chinese deliverymen are afraid of the dog. They don't know the dog is cross-species, a big pussy: but to mailmen and guys who bring Chinese food, illusion is all. Via Ripa was known for years in town as Calle de los Borachos, a collection of wino clammers and fishermen, fighters with truly vicious dogs that nevertheless read the papers and summonses to their humans. Our neighbors: the couple who spend days working on a home improvement project they'll never finish, one kid kicked out of the Navy in wartime, the other the proverbial whiteboy asshole with a turned around baseball cap on an empty head. I may vomit, indeed. People with no visible means of support amble about, drive Lexii, My Dog's Bigger Than Your Dog, My Cat Beat Up a Schoolbus, on summer days we will repeat what has happened every year since I arrived: a guy bashing in his buddy's skull with a 2x4, us watching where the dog steps on his morning walk because of broken bottles on the street and sidewalk... the exquisite beauty of young women in halter tops headed for the sea across the street. The incomparable vision of the sun over the ocean. Go figure. Kenneth Wolman/Sea Bright & Princeton, 6/24/04 With 2810 we have a common wall, though its folks have numbered: an elderly nurse practicioner who died and her dog who went to California: and the gay Jewish couple who did the renovation and after the lady at 2814 was murdered sold out to: the ophthalmologist who didn't know and didn't stay and wasn't very friendly and worse yet sold to the: Buppie stock- broker with loud friends and the state- of-the-art so to speak stereo dialed to some spot that only played boom-boom-boom we suffered but then he left for "pastures new" and we got: a little home- breaker whose paramours wife sometimes staked out the place, and made cliche scenes, we worried though about how she treated her two dogs. And now what do you know? a friendly young couple quiet and neat: our neighbors. David Latane 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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