August 10, 2005
August, the afternoon
of the year, when the civilized
retreat to shelter and shade.
I wake early, before morning
climbs over the mountain. I wake
hot, distressed. I run away from
my dreams. I wake in dampness,
and sleep again. I wake late
in the morning. I wake in wet
sheets. I dream of volcanos,
and wake with this heat on my
face. Last night a wind came
through our courtyard. It snapped
the top off the birch tree. I woke
this morning to the whining snarl
of the arborist's saw. The drowsy
hours. If there is conversation,
it is languid and undemanding.
If there is skin on skin, it is slick
and slippery. The air is heavy
and smells of smoke.
Sharon Brogan
***
And Such (a love song)
a veil of light
divides
this platinum sky -
the mounds, exposed
through the fabric
i try to muffle cries
the pain from your
fumbled surgeries
the crows are conscience
and the eagle soars...
the sun is undying and such,
is the moon
this long history is painted
with portraits
and you? write of peace
in times of war
in Colorado, there is this,
mortared sandstone
and earth tones
deep and wide
the sacred songs
of ancients -
strained echoes stray
in blazed winds
i choose to listen
with my skin
deborah russell
***
I love
I with the ice-chip eye
I love.
The flame licks and licks
in its box, panting
against the walls,
the hard metalmix
walls, ranting, wanting
to light the sky
Feed it, oxygenate it, fanfanfan it,
shout at it, put books on it, you're going to have to!
Bigger, faster, hot hot hotter!
The metalmix melts!
The flame billows up
and lights the sky
and the ice-chips in the eye
liquefy.
A first draft by Janet Jackson
11 August 2005
***
My first impressions were of wings and feathers in motion, metallic wings, a
mechanical bird in flight, an effortless, graceful bird that flew with
reticular wings in softly widening ellipses. As I viewed, the image took
more and more shape as a diagram, or electrical read-out, more like an EKG
strip or a stock performance graph. The colors are what became so
fascinating, specular teals and iridescent roses giving motion not only
right to left, but simultaneously front to back as if it reflected the
endless sky itself through which our bird flew, leaving it's marks and
scent, and was gone almost instantly as if, like some things, had never
really happened at all.
Peter Ciccariello
Rhode Island, USA
8/10/2005 11:19:48 PM
***
she waits for me
as I do the washing
prepare my porridge
while she waits
she edits my furniture
for her tidy house
when we get together
we will have more
grandchildren
it is so different
than the first marriage
the second or the third
it is our 'first true love'
we say, gazing at each other
like herons at the river
I bring the porridge
to the table
and think in its steam
too much cinnamon
and not enough
metaphor ...
Andrew Burke
***
snap right or snap left
sand dune waves wind winding down
grit catches the lens
seeks infinitesimal
changes a universe there
Douglas Barbour
Wednesday August 10 2005
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
lake
holds
sun moon stars
trees
hold
stars moon sun
Eli Mandel
Douglas Barbour
***
Sorry I'm late
The snow was in the sun
There was a prick in garden
A truck jack-knifed the particulars
There was a smell of old gas
The crows lost
As did the roses and all that blood we spilled for love
That prick in the garden
Photographers were lighting bombs
The olive tree fell just as we were getting started
We forgot to fill out the form
Celebrity drug disasters were drifting in our channel
My watch shows tomorrow's date
The disk shattered
There's that smell again
It's a form of expediency, or is it complexity?
I tried to inform the authorities
If I could find my name and my reason
If the birds would stop drifting like that
If someone would lend a hand at the entrance
I'd be less nervous saying this
My throat would work with my head and hands
Jill Jones
Sydney 10 August 2005
***
SIRK: TARNISHED A[ngels]
[via Faulkner's PYLON]
Something's the matter with my typewriter;
I left it behind
reading
kicks one way or the other.
Time for tomorrow's race
asking
Roger to squirm -
ninety proof fiction,
in the last hour my vision's become blurred.
Should move on,
heaven knows when I'll be able to talk to anyone.
Engine'll do the talking for you /
Don't make any promises.
A muddy bottom down there.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 8-10-05 (5:39 PM)
I didn't drive to the American Film Institute last night determined to write
during my first viewing of Douglas Sirk's 1958 black & white cinemascope
feature (screenplay adapted by William Faulkner & George Zuckerman). In
fact, I got a late start and expected to arrive 5-10 minutes into the
screening. When I found that the coming attractions were still rolling, I
decided to celebrate by treating myself to a writing possibility. The
title/procedure was concocted on the spot, and when the film concluded I
felt confident I could develop my rough draft into a snapshot representative
of the film as a whole. I should mention that "Roger" references Roger
Schumann, WWI ace fighter pilot whom we observe within the Depression-era
setting of the film racing planes around pylon-marked courses on a gypsy
circuit not unlike that of the rodeo.
***
wednesday
snap, she thinks about
the other
meanings
the sound of her sister's voice
over the line
the phone pulled, dropped
too many times
static and not quite
resignation
beans falling
waiting to be steamed
Deborah Humphreys
Newark, NJ
2:05 pm
***
Poetry Seeks Radiance
(on a line misheard at a lecture)
Poetry seeks ravens
I thought he said,
catching a dark feather
from the gibbet birds,
their proof of poetry's
keen eye and murderous
merciless beak.
The only radiance here
is the shining bones
pecked clean, the purest
possible form. If this
is tumbled in its chains
we must reassemble
it with unflinching hands.
Joanna Boulter
Darlington UK
***
Opened more
our lifetimes
fused scent-in-scent
held
decanting
Nordic hieroglyphs
our forms bronze
on Arabian silver
raw strips
our arms a Celtic knot
on this earthenware vessel
lip dripping mead
sucked in oceansalt
waiting out winters
on screaming seas
we are equals on the bridge
each a Viking captain
we reach to pick up
the only life we know
near our own
feathers fallen
an eagle swimming
moist air in her valleys
of sheep far beyond
your cliffs your desire
Judy Prince
8.10.5
***
MAC(K)'S PLACE
I woke up at a quiet space in Mac's place, confronted by
a straight choice:
Stay in bed
Get your act together and go buy some booze
Die
[MEMO TO SELF:
*Don't* get involved in a digression
over the etymology of "maquero"
and the link to
The Threepenny Opera
and Ferlinghetti and Auden.]
So anyway ...
Anyway is frayed, I ought to know this since whenever, but when can we ever
give up having lived in the sixties?
mehitabel's offspring
Robin Hamilton
***
THE GLANCE
(after "Girl With a Pearl Earring," J. Vermeer, Delft, c. 1666)
Don't look at me like that,
slightly parted lips,
the "c'mere and fuck me" look.
Quite mad to find you,
centuries dead, an object of desire.
Today in glitzy catalogues,
in thinny-thin women
tight jeans, halter tops,
you have your inheritors,
so much a falling-off.
Your glance not surly or
even a challenge,
no pout, no moué,
the glance perhaps
unintended openness,
a gift of spirit visible
even through a starched headdress
not white-virginal but of the world.
Were you alive for him,
were time and space compressed
to Utrecht or to Delft,
Jacob Van Eyck, blind to your loveliness,
blinded by your beauty,
still would walk through the churchyard,
play you on his little flute,
La Dolce Sirena.
Ken Wolman
***
A middle-aged saucy postcard woman, side saddle on a bus seat on the top
deck of an open top bus, skirt up, wide legs wide about the corner of the
seat, is reaching with her right hand towards the chip bag flying from her
right-hand's grasp, spilling fat chips towards another passenger, who looks
cross and apprehensive.
Three chips stick from her closing mouth. Perhaps her mouth is opening for
utterance. Eyes on the half-masticated food, a squashed-face dog licks her
chin. She hugs the animal to her with her left arm, holding in her left hand
billowing plastic carrier bags which seem to contain empty wrappers and
stained serviettes.
A plastic cup lies overturned on the floor, in a wet brown stain.
A saucy postcard man and another saucy postcard woman watch from adjacent
seats, both leaning sideways, laughing at the first saucy postcard woman's
discomfort.
Lawrence Upton
***
There and Back
In the dark I slipped my moorings,
drifted back all the way
to 1982.
The first thing to notice was
how alive I looked. Hair and beard
were dark again, my eyes
behind my spectacles burned.
Well, these were the midlife crisis years.
I was discovering infidelity,
shame, furtiveness,
intimacy, hope,
new possibility.
It was all very exhausting,
yet invigorating too.
How did I pull through?
A certain insensibility.
I never got the red sports car.
The night tide turned and speeded up.
Soon I was back in the present,
partner changed,
pale, creased, inflexible,
uxorious, content.
Clapped out wagon in the driveway.
1.15pm Wednesday 10 August 2005
Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne
***
bad hair snap:
how tell what's hidden
from the sun
'a paradoxical combination'
the carefully pruned
moustache & small beard
black
& white good
vs evil
tradition
signs of
or bristling white above
tough mouth
ing off
'to come and push'
but who pushes back at
'shaggy haired'
diplomacy
a bypass op
or ration
as the oil
slips
down the drain
Douglas Barbour
Edmonton August 3 2005
***
RHYME
whenever he
heard rhyme
especially couplets
he always felt
that he was
being hit
over the head
with a heavy
sledgehammer
and always
anxiously
awaited the
next blow.
Pmcmanus
Raynesparkuk
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