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8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol 19 no 5
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8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol 19 no 5
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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, May 1998
Thinking of the way I was
before my accident is very painful.
A Phase in My LifeStarry Flowers
STREAMS 5, 1991
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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 19 Number 5 May, 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.
David Michael Nixon 4
Ida Fasel 5-7
Sean Brendan-Brown 8-9
Geoff Stevens 10
Will Inman 11-13
R. Yurman 14-15
Phyllis Braun 16
Billie Lou Cantwell 17
Joy Hewitt Mann 18-20
Albert Huffstickler 21-24
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Simple PowersDavid Michael Nixon
Today, Anne did her own laundry:
down and up stairs with the basket;
put it away. Each small task moved
her closer to feeling whole and
light enough to carry herself
all over. None of us are ever
whole, but doing things can sometimeshelp us forget whats missing and
concentrate on our simple
powers that lift us out of the
quicksand and move us slowly on.
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Fixed PointIda Fasel
I was in love and knew it. Let me
see you turn out. -- Miss Chadwick.She showed me. From the hips.
After that, years of blood, bandaids,
patched pointes and unpatchable pain
(a fall only a coming back to rise again).
I took the pummeling for a dream,
my body floating radiant as a sari,boneless as a cat, coming down from a leap
with the vanishing lightness of virga,
a prima partnered all the way
to reverence and roses, secure in
the contours of a courteous skillful hand.
Practicing fouetts soaking wet,whipping in place toward thirty-two,
I remember the grassy bank Id
rolled down once, the world
not letting go at bottom
but whirling me on. More and more
I took control of balance,
turning, turning, my fixed point
a sparrow feather-throated
from the Swan Queens crown
counting for me from the window led
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The Stone Cube
at 140 Broadway
Ida Fasel
It stands on its toe pointe,
a feat of precision and control,
on dramas verge of precariousness,
too solid to flow, but with a mind to flow,
the color of blood, the sound of music.Like all geometrical forms
it is beautiful.
Like all abstractions it is endlessly
provocative.
Like all perfect things,
it never becomes monotonous.
Looking at it, reflecting on it,
you range from the ear-splitting forti
of being crushed by it
to the light but audible pianissimo
of being reassured.
It hasnt fallen on anyone yet.
So far so good.
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The Way Up
Is the Way Down
Ida Fasel
I saw her
standing
in terror
of the moving stairs.
I took her armand we
stepped on,
securely paired.
In the valley of
first floor
shadow
not a smile, not a word.
Her hand glowed
all the way
to my head.
Then I did.
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MoneySean Brendan-Brown
I miss my old office--the two polished circles
in mahogany where my elbows
carved the windowsill
as I watched boats some days
all day.
I drifted with the yachts, trawlers,cabin cruisers and flat-bottomed
aluminum rentals. Outside front-
loading espresso, rain tapped
my sunglasses like stiletto
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heels; inside benedicting money,
cigar smoke painted stink-umbrellas
overhead. Distracted
all day, we still made money--there was so much of it then
our work ethic was kill, kill.
Broke now, I remember the money.
Boats still drift in my mind--
their absence so painful--
dreaming without money is
seduction no more valid than
call you tomorrow. Valentines
for instance: day of days isnt it?
Do a net-search; Go To V
in this mink-oiled pigskin briefcase
candy-filled plastic hearts await
another dream-job; generic Luv
glitter-spattered on form-lace.GoTo L...
somewhere else a 30-something dow
sized CEO (rich at 20-something) bit
packaged pre-peeled carrots
and scissors through a summons:
lifes a hurricane party.
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BIG BANG THEORYGeoff Stevens
There was no thinking of the way I ambefore I was the way I am.
To my Mother it is/was very painful.
What was I before I was conceived?
Unplanned, what was I before?
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caterpillarswill inman
we are caterpillars. we eatand we shit.
we drag it all to ourselves
and when we are done, we
push it all away.
we mistake all that stuff for powerwe mistake entertainment for living
we load ourselves down to make up for not being
who we can be
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our shoulders wake us one day shaping wings
we imagine were afflicted with some alien growth
why should we believe we will ever fly
we settle
for being flown
but our grossness grounds us:
to have real wings
requires being friends with earth.
our rainbows
grow roots into living gravity.
we can learn
the limits and the connecting realness
of orbits.
time and chaos pull our feathers: no matter:
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to fly once in orbit, in convert, we
will give fresh birth to that cosmos
whose random love with chaos
begets us
out of the gluttony of ourselves
we have to be damned
before we can grow to be god
bliss is a shed skin
17 Ju
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Walking CastR. Yurman
I dreamed itlight as my own bones
a release
from the one
I dragged around
but its hardly something to walk in
thicker on the bottom
and heavier
the weight seems double
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After three weeks
its split down both sides
When I unwrap the elastic
and part the halves
whoevers in the room
retreats with a sudden half-smile
Dizzy myself at the stench
mine and not mine
I lay the graying armor aside
While I examine the skin
bathe the raw spots
do the exercises
the reeking plaster
waits beside my bed
I want to smash it
drop it onto the cement
drive a hammer against it
until it is powder
If I leave it off
too long my leg
trembles
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Back PainPhyllis Braun
A finger of pain presses my back, a spasmnot unlike a small misplaced orgasm.
I push my rigid back against the mattress
counting the seconds between repeats
as a woman in labor counts
contractions. Compared with that
this is a mouse, a ghost of pain.But I am caught by it, waiting
for its next lilliputian thrust
that, like the Chinese torture-drip,
will keep me from all thought or sleep.
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BatteredBillie Lou Cantwell
Secrets of painof fear
locked in
by a hand swung
often enough
to stifle pleas for help.
She could leave
Walk out the door
run run run
But what if
What if
He caught her someday?
Or what if he didnt
and the pain and fear
stopped all together?What purpose then to hate?
Was there another reason to live?
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An Old BoyfriendJoy Hewitt Mann
Asked him how hed beenany kids?
his relatives?
and he stood leaning back slightly
ready to run
like a bicycle spinning its back wheel.
We hadnt parted on the best of terms . . .
Hell!
Id threatened to kill him.
I said goodbye, my hand
held out, optimistic as a speed bump
and he backed away
looking as if it were a portent
picking up speed
shifting into an infinitesimal gear
careless of the oncoming traffic.
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Amanda the Great: Matinees OnlyJoy Hewitt Mann
No one seeing her erect carriagecould imagine the wire she walks, thin
as the edge of a razor blade
or see in this balanced deception
the pole extending from each shoulder
or the dead children that cling to each end.
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Silence Is GoldenJoy Hewitt Mann
Hush
do not speak
look what happened to my Uncle Harold
who spoke to his wife every day
and woke one morning to find her gone
run off with a silent man; or
my cousin Bob
who spoke up at a corporate meetingand was downsized the following week.
Do not speak
for I saw a man speak to another
in a bar
and he is recovering slowly
from the unspeakable
done to him
and my best friends father spends week
in jailfor speaking To a policeman from his ca
and Jesus
remember Jesus?
he spoke so many words they nailed him
to a cross
as punishment for his sin.So hush
do not speak
make love to me.
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BenedictusAlbert Huffstickler
I know how lonely people watch TV,
sitting in the near-dark in theirlivingrooms, leaned forward, mouthingthe words of the actors, movingslightly as they move, raisingtheir hands in half-gestures, fillingthe sudden silences with their ownstatements or questions, creatinga dialogue that fills that empty
space around them. Old people whohave no one to check on them oryoung ones with no one to go toor the middle-aged who are reachingsome turning point in their lives,some precipice, some reckoningthey only half understand and dread
totally. They lean forward asthough to enter that square of lightand find a new life, one lessthreatening and more comprehensible.I know how they feel, I know howthey respond to this semblance oflife that resembles life moreclosely than whats around them.I know and am afraid for them andfor myself and dread with themthat final moment when the tubegoes blank and the room grows
dark and there is nothing leftbetween them and their loneliness.I know how it is and I know thathowever superficial this appears,its not, you see. Theyre not justwatching TV: theyre praying
from Cedar Hill Review, Mena AZ, S
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My Mothers LonelinessAlbert Huffstickler
I dont know about other writers but I spenda lot of time and energy making sure that Im
not writing anything corny. It gets to be a
drag after a while. So Im just going to let
go and tell you that I think about my mothers
loneliness sometimes, her dead these 22 years,
and its like visiting a shrine. I see hermoving in her bumbling way around that old
house that has become a second skin--though
as she got older, she couldnt stay in it by
herself and had to move across the yard to
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my sisters--mumbling to herself in a daze.
Shes thinking about me, the prodigal, the
beloved who comes but never stays, who, much
as he tries, can never be that caring and
kind and totally attentive son that she longsfor. Im still lost back then, still trying
to find a place for myself in a world I have
little or no understanding of. Im a little
better now but she never lived to see it.
So sometimes I go back and watch her,
immersed in her loneliness as in a deep sea
and wandering from room to room only half-seeing and half-hearing anything but the
murmur of her blood. She is very, very
lonely. And I think that loneliness has
become a part of my own. It shores it up,
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buttresses it in case it should ever, by
some strange accident, weaken sufficiently
to let the world in. You might say that
my mother and I are living in parallel
universes, wandering from room to roomnursing our loneliness. I feel her thoughts
spread out over me and for a moment Im
comforted--as the child is comforted to
find that gentle face peering down at him
in the first moment of waking. I want
to tell her that sometimes I still dont
know what to do and sit down at thetypewriter as one would approach a Ouija
board and start typing just to see if
theres any message yet. And I want to
tell her that I remember her loneliness,
especially in those last years, and am
still saddened by it. And now, at the
risk of being even cornier, I stop long
enough to light a candle -- You have to
light a candle at a shrine, dont you? --and sit peering into the flame for a
long time hoping for some sort of
revelation, hoping to understand someth
about loneliness that Ive never understo
before. But nothing comes, of course,
and, after a while, feeling maudlin,
corny and discontented with myself, Iblow the candle out and go on about
my business.
from Poetic Space, Eugene, O
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