Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 19 no 11

8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 19 no 11

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, December 1

Sitting upon a wooden shelf

an old dusty book

closed and all alone

no cradling arms to lie in

and no soft voice to hear.

Showing its ugly cover

its chapters have been

wasted away

to decay and mildew.No one dares to take

a look inside,

left alone forever

with secrets never to

be told.Ugly ChildCherilyn Jenkins

Streams 11, 1997


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 19 Number 11 December, 1998Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher

Thomas Perry, Assistantcontents

Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $20 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (incl

postage). Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envel

Waterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127

1998, Ten Penny Players Inc.

Will Inman 4-5

Gertrude Morris 6-7

Joy Hewitt Mann 8

Ida Fasel 9-10William Woolfitt 11-17

Kennette H. Wilkes 18

David Michael Nixon 19

John Sokol 20-21

Gary Allan Wilmot 22Fredrick Zydek 23

Victoria Garton

Leonard Goodwin 2

H. Edgar Hix

Albert Huffstickler 2


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http://www.scribd.com/doc/37861991/Streams-11


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the littleness of words - will inman

it is not enough to measure the littleness of wordsagainst the ranges and reaches of galaxies.

the distances are as far inside us.but what other

creatures do we have to ride on so far and so long.telescopes are mechanisms and do notgrow from our marrow.

words known words,used words, words that give us back to ourselves

words have no limits but seize on images and visionsand, faster than the speed of sound, fast as light,create all that-out-there in a sizetrue enough to spread out in our skullsand still leave room enoughfor questions to ride in on elephants

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but, no,words are not the thing, words

can never be the thing, but words can serve as waveson which processes of becoming

can wake and work and move. on words we can remembermeanings of images and high litaniesdown which to dive for what cannot otherwisebe held long enough to burn our fingers on.

wordscan be rainbows in mud,

shades of meanings and

possibilities can archbetween minds and gut-listenings.

godis not a word but can ride words backward down

prayers or perch on your hoping bruised lipsa hummingbird full of sky and the rustle of syllablesbefore they are more than wind

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Photo Album - Gertrude Morris

I dont want to turn the pageon these snapshots, moments

stopped in black and whiteby a Kodak box camera,

of little Gertrude, age ten,with mother, brother and daddyin his best suit, on a Sundayin Crotona Park. It is warm;

a cold wind pinks our faces.We stroll to Indian Lake, renta boat and daddy rows us to theother side where stood a huge boulder,

a fallen star, glittering with micah.Steps were chiseled into the granitethat kids would climb on a dare.(One late day in Autumn

my friends and I were still in the parWe saw a shabby, sunburnt manreclining on the lawn.With a sick smile of complicity

he unbuttoned his fly, and alimp white thing fell out.He kept smiling as we ran.But we never told anyone

according to the rules of The Tribe.)Now, its time to walk home

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past families sitting on bencheson Southern Boulevard. Shloime

The Fiddler plays old country tunes

with much glissando con brioand passes a cap for coins.He disappeared in the dead of winter,

(to Florida they said) each spring,migrating with the birds, to playin the yards of Longfellow Avenue,Vyse and Hoe, a middle-aged Pan

scraping a reedy violin off-key.Shloime is gone who knows where;the mothers and fathers are gone.Weeds sprout from cracked asphalt

where benches stood on the BoulevaBut on a Sunday afternoon,when the traffic stops for red,in the quiet of those days

you can hear a fiddle playinga frolicsome air you remember,when sprightly ladies danced with laand bearded men with men, to the tu

of a risible rabbi who lifted his caftacapered into the water dry,and came out wet again.

*old Yiddish fo

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What the Hand Has Written

Joy Hewitt Mann

While she sleeps the man

holds her hands like a book,reading the words hiddenin the patina of toil,rolling them out like a scroll webbedwith inscriptions,words between the lines bleachedby disease.

He turns her hands,pushes,pulls the skin, holdseach finger up to the light,brings them to his face to smellthe words,

holds her palms above his eyesto read each letter with his skin.

Down again,

opened like wings, wordsbleed into the white as he cries.His own hands, trembling,are useless, sohe presses hers together,becoming his for prayer. OhHeavenly Father

pray for us sinners now and at the hoWaking,she encircles his sleeping headwith a wreathof arms.

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Questions with the Answer in Them - Ida Fasel

I learn the heart sends 4,300 gallons

of blood 60,000 miles through the interiorevery day every day every day, a mere pump.

How do you measure the capacity to care?

I learn the Ice Age molded my brain

unchanged an iota the 30-50,000 years since.

How do you account for the leap,

the springing forth like a great new thing

in the bone and marrow of spirit?

I learn I am an organism compounded

of nitrogen and carbon over unimaginable

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eons. But what set the sacred fire of will,

who vocalized the beautifully contoured phrase

of life?

I move in mellow air, frost danger over.

The sky is luminous with curlicued clouds

that drift above their own shadow,

brighter for the brightness they make.

A light breeze threads itself through my hair.

I make two of one primrose.

Wrong time, they say, to cut.

Busy earth profoundly

connecting with heaven in flowers,

I take your powers to heart.

I rise in parts. Must rise.

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Zoe Watkins, Underground Musician - William Woolfitt

I went down there the first time

to help my neighbor Jenna study her astronomy notes.She unzipped her backpack and we squatted on the grate.

Our adjacent apartments were so cold

even the cockroaches moved out by Thanksgiving.

Jenna said next semester wed move into a packing box

and split the cost; with thicker walls we would live

as cardboard gypsies. We both laughed.

We got to be friends that way.

I went back because I wanted to sing and I was trying

to be brave. I had to search my own heart

for a sympathetic wizard, and when I took out my guitar,

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that was me pinning a heros medallion to my chest.

The Emerald City was down there, in the maze of tubes.

I stood fifty feet from Henry because it seemed

the safe thing to do, safe because his customers included

ladies in business suits who called him by name.

I figured that if someone gave me trouble,

Henry would rescue me. Unless he was the attacker.

He had three shopping carts of books to sell,

hardbound classics, Harlequin romances, and Danielle Steel,

and he stuffed the money he made into the pockets

of his dirty plaid coat.

I started with Seven Year Ache and then tried

one of my own, Blue Violins Serenade Me to Sleep.

Some old guy tossed me a buck.

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That was my pattern, something old, something new.

I thought it important to save old songs from oblivion.

I talked to Henry as we waited,

when the last of the commuters had wandered by,

and the automated monster worms filled the tunnels

with deafening noise. He asked me why I wanted to sing.

I said, When I figure out how to blend my voice, words, and guitar,

its like riding in a cyclone and painting the sky.

He picked up a paperback. He said, I love to read,

and his whole expression changed.

I asked him why. He said, So that the silverfish dont eat me alive.

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Room Lit With Sparks - William Woolfit

Books saved me from my world of flames.

Mom, in her fluffy sweaters and pleated skirts, was the firebug.

Carrying home bread and milk, Dad always toted a can of gasoline.She called him names and he threw plates.

She made him sleep on the couch; he slammed the door

and drove away.

I crouched under the front porch behind the morning glory vines.

I drew a circle to mark my kingdom in the dirt.

I felt so tiny and feverish, and I knew that someday I would burn.

Swimming through the cool rivers of chapter after chapter,

I prayed I would turn into water that would not boil,

stone that would not melt,

earth that could not be scorched.

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Last pages came and went.

Robinson Crusoe never sent me a map,

Tom Swift never built me a time machine,

and the Hardy Boys never solved the mystery of the burning house.

Our friendships went only so far.

I heard more noises in the kitchen. I opened another book,

glued my eyes to the letters like boulders that did not waver,

the lines of black print that streamed down the page.

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Unwanted Property - William Woolfitt

The sisters couldnt bear

the sight of his household remains.

They let their fathers estate

waste away. The pine trees

grew thick and threaded their needles

into the window screens. Mice raided

the boxes stacked on the spare stairs,

nested in old patent leather purses,

nibbled the corners of books and magazines.

The covers of his detective novels turned

the color of the dust-filmed antique green bottles

that populated the basement. The stoves knobs

and burners rusted. The rubber hoses inside

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the dishwasher rotted. Mold colonized the icebox.

The sisters let themselves in once after the funeral.

One of them had a half-hearted box of cleaning supplies.

Such a shame, they agreed.He let this place

go to the dogs. Nothing we can do to save it now.

They collected their flimsy rags,

shut the door behind them and walked away.

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A Small Piece of Cheese

Kennette H. Wilkes

When I was a kid

thinking about being dead

thinking, eye level to the mouse

in the trap, its eye still life shiny

I wondered what death might be

maybe like a mouses ear, small

neat, listeningor even a whisker

quivering.

I did not visualize it still

but like a sustained vibrato

of bow on string

violin, cello

viola tuning up

before the sonata.

What it does to time

the conductors baton liftedin silence before

The Valkyrie

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A Night in Erie County Penitentiary (July 15, 1971) - David Michael Nixon

When the lights go out, I shift in bed,talk to the others, try to sleep,

Meanwhile, in the soft folds of my mind,the people from the past are getting ready;when I finally go to sleep,they move within my dream, old friends,though slightly blurred around the edges.When morning comes, cell doors clang open:the dream shuts down, is over.

My friends slide backbeneath my minds warm covers,and I get out of bed,shivering in the early morning air.

first appeared in Rochester Peoples Yellow Pagewith the title A Night i

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Butterfly Trapped in a Bookstore - John Sokol(Mandala Books, Pittsburgh, September, 1993)

. . . and now she browses around the display table

in the middle of the store, stops to rest on a freshcopy of Dantes Purgatorio; no solace in limbo, shehovers over Parmenides, overLegendary Dancers,

and then Twentieth-Century Roses, Andrew FieldsNabokov and Pre-Columbian Shell Engravings

before touching down on the glossy surface of

(honest to God)Jamaica and Its Butterflies.

Seemingly assured by this kindred port (moot ironyto her), she stays long and motionless, mocking

photography and contemplating her own opus:Empirical Escape. She seems to know Im watching

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her, hence the apparition of a thought-bubble aboveher wings: No bookworm jokes, please.

Its Labor Day weekend and Im minding the store for

Frank. Not a single customer in the past two hours.I dont want to be here and Im counting the minutesuntil I can lock up and go home. Meanwhile, Papilio

Whoknowswhatsis has been winging her prayer over andaround these books and toward the light for nearly six

hours, beating the glass in the front window, a mere

two feet from the open door and freedom.

When I close, Ill use the OPEN sign to push and guideher out. Well leave together..

from The Advocate, Vol. 8 #1 Spring, 1994, Prattsv

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An Unnecessary Loss

Gary Allan Wilmot

emptiness hovers in the air

like a foggy mist

clouding images captured

in a photograph

searching for a clue

i stumble over a threshold,

ironclad law of privacyshatters in silence

a poem

on crumpled paper

a poem

of regretful loss;

raw emotion in eloquent words,

words i wished youd express,

words i wished i could have expresse

the space between usthick as the wall

that kept me

silent . . .

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Praying into All Our Spaces

Fredrick Zydek

We must learn to take our prayers

not just into the darkness

nor just into the divine light

but into all our visible spaces,

the slaughter houses of the spirit,

the ecstasies of our neurons,

and the disappointments waitingin our pocketbooks and mirrors.

Good prayers shouldnt just erupt

in the sanctuary. They should

follow us through the supermarket,

into the places of our toil,

even into situations where kisses

become colorless as the snow

and the hopes we piled on the altarcome back empty as a closed hand.

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A Trace of Shadow - Victoria Garton

Rooms you vacate to that musty smell belong

in the past. Leave even a trace of your shadow,

you are lost in them forever.

Like a passing season when your life

is a river out of its banks; newspapers, letters,

and bills float past. Rising water drives your pots.

Your pans clink like armor. Possessions

tell how far youve come from the snail dragging its home.

Walking unbruised through dark rooms is a pattern whichwhen lost, insists that life is about loss. In your mind

there is a light switch above the book of poetry

on the nightstand, and a sweaty lover

you must reach over.

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To the Library - Leonard Goodwin

Father led us up the stepsto the huge 42nd Street Library

on a summer Saturday morningWe passed the two great lionsturned to stone

Went through the swinging doorsdown the corridorwith vaulted ceiling, marble floorwood-paneled walls

To the Childrens Room.Sister and I stood for a moment

in the doorwayTaking in the spacious

sunlit areathe librarians friendly nod

Father departed for another roomassuring us of his return

One arrow pointed right

for older childrenAnother leftfor younger children

Sister went rightas I went leftslowly passing the shelvesbuilt into the wooden walls

Stopped at the sectionmarked Fairy Tales

Before me the red bookthe blue book, the green bookthe golden book of fairy tales

I took the golden book

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from the shelfSat down at a large, round

polished oak tableopened to a story

on a picture-decorated page

The room faded awayas I found myselfin the enchanted forests and townsof handsome heroes, beautiful maidensgiants, sorcerers

I read faster and fasterto learn of adventurous outcomesin a world so wondrously differentfrom that at schoolor on the streets of Brooklyn

Father returnedannouncing time to leave

Sister was readywith two Nancy Drew mysteries

I asked them to waittill I finished my storythen borrowed three fairy tale books

The first was started Saturday eveningcontinued Sunday morningthe minute I awoke

Only after much urgingto get dresseddid I put it down

All three were readylong before the due date

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Jushua - H. Edgar Hix

I found an old book.

(Rather like finding a baby

born 80 years old.)It had belonged to my father

and my grandfather before him.

It was slender and hard cover,

faded aquamarine with gold embossed letters

and yellow paper.

It was a theological expositionof types of Christ in the book of Joshua.

I opened it randomly to page 43

and read a passage giving me

a whole new insight into the relationship

of Moses, Joshua and Jesus.

In mid-sentence, I turned the page

and found myself on page 46.

When the book had been boundthe paper had been improperly cut,

leaving the outside folds

holding the pages together

like Siamese twins.

After nearly a century,

those pages were stillonly torn apart to page 11

and I had a new insight

into my grandmother,

my father

and me.

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1927

A Self Portrait

Albert Huffstickler

(excerpts)

I dont want to make a big thing out of it (just because it is a big thing) but ev

time I am asked to present myself as Somebody, I freak out. I prefer to be the Nob

behind the poem or behind the story. Because, underneath it all and despite any re

ances I get from friends, family, enemies, I do not think I am Somebody. I am a w

class Nobody. I do not exist. That is why I work so hard on the writing. If I can

as myself, then at least I can manifest. Everything I write could be titled,AnotherAttempt to Define Who I Am. Because thats what I do. Oh, I rely on my past, on

often as not but the interpretation I give it is out of the moment, how I see things t

particular day. All my life I have admired and wondered at people who presented

selves with assurance, who knew who they were. Because I didnt really. The tru

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that I am a fiction of my own invention. I am the Poet. And what is the Poet? He

that thing that produces poetry. Not much to hang a life on. I am not a specialist

kind. I am not an authority on anything. I have had no training. I have lived out

life doing menial labor of one sort or another, restaurants a lot of the time, because

didnt have any specialty and didnt seem able to come up with the determination athe discipline to develop one. I have limped through life on the crutch of my abili

use language. It is all I have. It is all I am. It is all I can do. So when suddenly I

asked to tell the story of my life as though I were Somebody, naturally I freak out.

not Somebody and therefore I cannot tell you the story of my life. I can only tell y

some things about myself. If my life had plot and continuity, I would have written

long ago. And sold it. And probably made a fortune in this age where no one realknows who he is. Yes, its true. Everybody is really like me. They dont know w

they are. But the difference between us is that I know I dont know who I am whe

most people have acquired a label, a role, that they think is them and therefore the

assume that they know who they are. I will not be trapped in that No-Mans Land

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cannot tell you who I am and I cannot tell you the story of my life. I can only tell

some things about myself.

It seems to me that what my life has mainly been about is writing. Or put it an

way, my life has been a journey toward the center and the writing, the poetry, has bthe story of that journey. This journey really never ends or perhaps it ends for mo

at a time along the way when youre in love or when you have one of those crys

moments when everything is in place. But then the moment passes and youre on

road again.

I think perhaps, to a poet, art is a way of dedication and discipline, a mans of f

lowing a spiritual path. Its been said over and over again that any path will take ythere. I think that for me and for many of the artists Ive encountered in life and

through their work, this is the case. And I think that, by recording his journey of t

spirit, the artist can give hope and light to others as they follow their own path.

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The Way of Art

It seems to me that

paralleling the paths of action, devotion, etc.,

there is a path called Artand that the sages of the East would recognize

Faulkner, Edward Hopper, Beethoven, William Carlos Williams

and address them as equals.

Its a matter of intention and discipline, isnt it?

combined with a certain God-given ability.

Its what youre willing to go through, willing to give, isnt it?Its the willingness to be a window

through which others can see

all the way out to infinity

and all the way back to themselves.

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And so it ends. After a brief sojourn in the light, this Somebody gratefully retu

being Nobody. The Poet retreats behind the poems and is happy to do so because,

youve probably figured out by now, thats where he belongs, thats where he reall

lives.

excerpted from Atom Mind, The Living PoetAlbuquerque NM, V. 5

Wint

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 19 no 11