Snapshots, November 17th, 2005


Dog Rides Harley

While she took my blood-sample,
the nurse and I discussed our dogs.

My labradoodle Lolita
is shy of paddling in water.

Her Œbichon feral¹ jumps up spryly
for rides on her Harley

round Williamstown, then swims out
further than any other dog.

After, I think: surely she skites?
We shall watch out these warm
Williamstown summer nights.
 

7 am, Wednesday November 17, 2004

Max Richards at Cooee
North Balwyn, Melbourne



***

On waiting for trains at Central
written while listening to Miles Davis playing ‘Round Midnight
and reading Lowell’s imitations of Montale
after arriving home late after yet another delayed journey
and before booking a taxi for an early morning appointment
at the clinic in Kogarah

Breath puffs as clouds winding shadow
and lift myself up into caverns and fluoro
around clashing and hilarious drill call
timing wrong again, oh droll little timetable
and another orbit that I’d chase
there’s exit in sign language arrow only
whether paper-slip quiet or barrow thought
perhaps with violin or sax chase to midnight
salt is also part in oxygen and the sea
prepares for parting rudders fuel horns
oh smoke and the dangling old flares
there’s a net that you might get caught
ready now forget the warnings
that idea the night swings onto axes
cracking orchestra and cackhand singsong
run the old gloom voodoo down
ash is here but so are stars and the icon sign
‘Sharpies’ neon hole-in-one for all players
which isn’t the time of dead deals
already it’s here and the doors grip


Jill Jones
Snapped Tuesday night for Wednesday 17 November



***


Sonnet Today
for Pat



I could tell you my life

But you've got your own.

No need for duplication.

Today the computer opens

On a magnificent scene

From far far away: snow,

Icicles and an old shack.

How much of your life

Comes in a box? I stake

The tomato bush as I

Transplant it, getting

My hands dirty, a little

Piece of the world

Under each nail.



Andrew Burke


***


dear  Árni
try to just
wiggle a toe
for us or a
flick tremor
of a toenail
not yet the
ankle knee
or a foot
flying up high
traversing air
Icelandic fling
snowshoe stomp
skaters pirouette
mountain leap
ocean paddle
but for now
a toe will do
or a finger tip
welcome back


patrekur 7-38
raynesparkuk



***


     Fly eating a crumb
     ------------------

     2 shadesail wings.
     6 strut legs.
     2 black-hemisphere-camera eyes.
     2 horizontal antennae vibrating, transmitting, receiving.
     Airducts, wiring, processing equipment, waste outlet.
     Airlock, revolving door, escalator its mouthparts.
     Diluting, dissolving - sweet vomit its muzak.

     Janet Jacksn
    10am 17 November 2004, Murphy's Cafe, Mundaring, Western Australia


***


Winter

There is the quiet cat-paw foot-pad
of snow melding against velveteen snow;
the bright pierce in the eye of the ice-fields
and the glacier groans, whale-songs;
the thunder of the avalanche gods
reordering the world (its steel cars,
its wooden frames, its pavements)
into pulverized place;

                              there is the whip
sting of sleet, swarms of ice-picks
crowding a pedestrian face; the
thick coat of water from thawed storms
soaking through wool, through bone;
there is the crowded flood of a river
rushed by a wind even the gulls strain
wing-muscles to beat;

                    and there are snow-men,
more mud than snow, more gravel, but
packed hard into place with mitten-marks;
icicles snapped and suckled; snowflakes
vanished against tongues; wet swing sets
and sparrow-tracks, duck-tracks;
dark open packets of water gulping
for air in the white sheet expanse
of the sea.

Knut Mork Skagen 
Trondheim




***


soul in transit
meticulous detail

beyond the blue
nine lifetimes

darkness preying
as light seeps though


Gerald Schwartz 
West Irondeq uoit, New York 8:20 AM


***


Snap or

Walking Theory #87
 
³Escape the Gym²

Her T-Shirt, she walks by

Real fast, barely an eye to my eye.

           *

³How you doing, Mom?²

³I guess I¹m surviving. And that¹s about it.²

³You always were a survivor.²

³Yes. I am a tough old birdŠAll these deaths

you know, I am sure it¹s true that some of them

just want to escape.²

³Why do you think they want to escape?²

³Oh, I think there¹s just too many people

and too many problems. That¹s what I think.²

*  
³What¹s your project now?²

³My project ­the one that makes me money ­

is a book for a Library. But I am also writing.²

³Well, don¹t stop. Once you stop it¹s hard to

start. I took a class and the man told me

not to stop. He said he would publish anything

I wrote. But I had three little kids.

Sometimes life just goes like that.²

³Wasn¹t Pa a good writer?²

³Yes, but it was mother who was the best.

In those days nobody thought to preserve it.²

*

³Do you miss Chris?²

³All the time.²

³I don¹t think he knew where to fit.²

³He had so much intelligence and imagination.²

³He did not know how to ask for help.²

³He did. When he did, his voice was so plaintiff.

But Daddy could not hear him. I kept telling Dad

To take Chris out and talk to him. But

He never did. It was not his generation.

Now everybody talks to everybody.²

                        *

Lord, give my mother a shawl

Across her shoulders, when she crosses:

Make it white with a thin thread of red

Sewn close on the edge of each border.



Stephen Vincent


***


deleted from D:

mad quest not sweet
suffered intimacy shared
happy unctuous confidante
        nothing divine certainly

forward slaves
        arts sorrow

beloved shadows
realized forms contrary

dreams persist
spent companions

Wednesday November 17 2004

Douglas Barbour


***


This new moon night
the city is too bright
for all but a few stars.

On the river path, I find
a dead pigeon. I leave it
for scavengers. The next

morning there is nothing
but feathers and kernels
of corn. Now the sky

hangs low and thick;
pinkish with the city's
reflection.This wind

speaks, it tells me
there is snow
in the mountains

but the glaciers melt.
Across the street
a light burns in an empty

room. I feel like this
sometimes, an old house
cut into apartments, rooms

filled with transient belongings,
and here and there
a vacancy, bare bulb lighting

an abandoned space.
I wake each morning
from old dreams of past

places, relocate myself
to here, now. The air shifts
each day, another day.


Sharon Brogan


***


breath will not                 what is this
          darkening abandon      what
enfolds as fire does its wings     to nothing
                      heat               light
brief flaring               after such
                the shape of skull between
imagined fingers           unyielding
          lunar weightlessness
     words cannot        such brief
                                                say    unsay


Alison Croggon
Williamstown, Victoria



***


Needling

I still feel pain in the place
where the needle drew my blood.
The phantom kind
arming truth under the surface.

I wondered about the taut way
you talk.
Lies take time to swim.
Here comes another kick.


Jill Chan


***


Flooding All Over


1. 

grey rainy day, here, though a variable
          sea 
          of familiar, migrating,

dipping & bobbing, glinting humpbacks,
          five 
          or more wide, all hues

in streaming bidirectional flux,
          blind 
          or nearly so, to each other.

too many to count & maintain ones own.  how do they know,
          unspoken,
          to follow rules for passing?

& for traffic?  & for tresspass: Y¹all, I confess today
          bumping 
          a little impolitely a faux-cheetah umbrella.


2.  

& child, I thought of you, aged two, the night I
          found 
          you had climbed a chair alone

& somehow turned on the blasting
          faucet--
          flooding all, which you said

was for watering the black/white
          checkered
          floor tiles (long before

you knew whales, Vermeer &
          Dali)
          so sugar maples could grow there.





chris murray, Dallas, TX, 17 Nov 2004



***


all music is the pain of breaking
nodes of stars are seeds of plants
that tendril skyless sky

where smocks
of those never born
and never that never tenders

are stapled to  back of eyelid
and yet they drift so easily,
it seems our skins

could be taken up and put aside
and taken up again, bright infants
in grey milk of any morning's light,

while dark will counts its way
up stairs and refuses to breathe
for fear of breathing in

or igniting that velvet fire
of two black calla lilies
that fold up, airless,

into silk leaved ears
that listen to moonless night
where all the bells

are breaking
not daylight's faith
of our fathers living still

in spite of dungeon, fire,
and sword, in every extinguished
hallway, every kitchen filling with smoke,

but something else,
that creature which has never heard
its name called

on any living lip
but which answers
to the names it's called

a scouring
pink swarm of locusts,
unearthed, unbeautiful

how does it sing?
it goes unknowing
how it goes

ah, of
so little, or of so much
music is the joy of breaking


Rebecca Seiferle
Waltam MA
Midnight 11//18



***


in two


I proposed

to unknow

you when

you declared

my dream

informal poverty



Sheila E. Murphy