Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol 19 no 9

8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol 19 no 9

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, October 199

A poetcan take a dying world

and revive it

like it was a new born baby.

A Poet Can Tara Buckley

STREAMS 9, 1995


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 19 Number 9 October, 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.

Ida Fasel 4

Will Inman 5-13

Gertrude Morris 14-16

Geoff Stevens 17

Joan Payne Kincaid 18

Herman Slotkin 19-20

David Michael Nixon 21-23

Bruce Hesselbach 24-25

John Sokol 26

Fredrick Zydek 27

R. Yurman

M.M.Nichols

Kit Knight 3

Albert Huffstickler 3


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http://www.scribd.com/doc/37687152/Streams-9


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A Brush with Life - Ida Fasel

Hope is the thing with feathers

Emily Dickinson fascicled in her upstairs room

as 20,000 birdsongs filled with airwith futile, futile, futile.

Hope is envelopes dropped in the mail

in a time when days were longer

than they are now, and answers

were delivered to our house number

early morning and mid-afternoon.I plunged down the stairs headfirst,

touching one, missing others.

How could I fail? buoyed up

by an ocean tumult of expectation,

hope sounding out at the highest decibel.

Oh how I flew in my brush with life

the summer I was 13!

Hope is a drudge whose broom

now and then breaks out a blossom

Hope is a tiny flower of the tundra

that survives the fiercest of winters

Hope is a pen that writes under water

and keeps its will and word to write w

Hope is 2,000 birdsongs, or 200, or 20

or even 2 sounding out against the 20,0

not so not so not so.

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Moving On - Will Inman

Lee and Della met me when they bought oysters

at the fist stall in City Market. Violet had told themshe was pregnant by me when she tried to prove to me

I was a man. I dont know what else she told them. They

knew I was watched by FBI and local cops for my leftwing

connections. They invited me to rent the east side

of their house on 21st Street.

One night, Della had

a few drinks, came over to my side of the house, eased

up to me, tried to kiss me. Lee was just across the hall.

Uneasy, I swiped at her in what was meant to be a gentle

but clear brush-off. My finger snagged her glasses

and knocked them onto the floor. Della started

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screaming. Swept cereal and cornmeal cartons

off the top of my fridge. Knocked the drying rack of dishes

and glasses onto the kitchen floor. Shoved a shelf

of books off the mantel of the sealed fireplace.Then raged back to her and Lees side, called the police,

told them That Communist across the hall shed trusted

in her home had struck her.

Police came; I told them my

version of what happened. Lee argued Della into not

placing charges. When the cops left, Della came back

to my rooms and said she was sorry. I felt a huge

surge of hurt and grief, broke down sobbing.

I soon moved out. Couldnt trust her after that.

After I

was summoned before the House UnAmerican Committee,

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Della and Lee invited me to rent the ground floor

of a place theyd moved to on West Seventh. I did.

The man I rented from when the UnAmericans called me

had told me to move. I wont say what all I did,whom all I made out with, at my new place. If Lee

and Della knew, they never let on. I lived there till

I decided Winston-Salem was too hot for me, and Im

not talking about the weather. Junius urged me to move

with him and Gladys in New York and start my life

over. I did: it was like another country. I began

writing in earnest. Thats the country Im still

living in, still planting trees, creating people,

being created anew over and over, still the same.

from Pudding Magazine #37, Ju

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way through all things - will inman

to wade through this cluttered roomthis dirt-clotted floor

with oceanrising in me:

dark faceless forceful:knowing

knows down me, awareblood,

sweat with feelings,with direction conscious down my flesh

iride with this surge, surf this dark, howwaves move me, fill mewith knowings i have no words for, this

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justis

with darkglad lifting, howirises

open in this garden one by one, bluerising out of green, skyfacein small lappings, ocean

knows the waythrough all things, this dark surge the petalsbroken resistless waves I look at my husk

what moves through me pulses beyondand immediate here in this wet and wakingnow

I would be with you, how this motionis!

3 April 1998,

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i lean into that dark - will inman

i stand at cave entrance, stare,lean into that darkness as if it were alienturf, a space beyond entering, let alonesearching.

again, i take hold of that fineariadnes-thread of self-belief, urged on by mycurious woman-part, not to analyze, but to know,firsthand, that intimate distance center my

soul.dark is too often seen as hostile. it

can be, yes, dangerous if encroached on withoutrespect or caution. but, neglected, its depthsmay remain inimical unless claimed, in reverentreach, for brace with whole self.

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i have noillusion that my devil-source is separate fromangel purposes. i have discovered much, steppingoutside orthodox rote and warning.

im notso much brave as, i repeat, curious. one day,i shall step across too far too fast: i hopeby then to have grown wings to lift me outof danger.

im not talking feathers: im

talking touch with instincts taproot quick,with truer aim than judgment.

but if i gotoo far to fly, so be it.

darkness has nevernot known whats with me 8 July 1998, T

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the wizard of light - will inman

the wizard of illumination keeps his handsgloved in night.

he reaches deeper in thanstars. but stars ride his body like sacredleeches, sucking at his shadows for fuelto burn on.

he is attended by dark angelsfrom whom nothing is hidden. they reach

depths most ordinary people, even most angels,deny.this is not a matter of evil but of

intensities. evil settles for sensations anddiversions and cannot maintain against realcaring.

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for caring is a wave, a substanceof sacred motion, a true force. dark angelshum to the fury of caring. connection atcenter. from which all true living

stems and proceeds.learn to stand

in the mouth of a hurricane and weep suchtears, even in the last dredge of drowning.laugh

and the dark angels will see you home

to a hell that sings

29 Augu

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Daddy Bones - Gertrude Morris

First came the lathering up, then,

shearing a swath through shaving cream,

hed rub his talcum-smooth cheek

to mine. Then came the starched, immaculate

shirt, (white on white) the wide tie,

and then we walked to the zoo,

where the brown bears played Johnny-

on-the-pony, and daddy

dropped quarters for me to find.

Some Sundays he sewed coats and suits

for us, running tailors chalk

across my breasts. As a kid

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he rode me horsey on his knee,

pumping up and down; once

he touched me quick and sly.

Werent all daddies like that?

Suddenly he was sick enough for bed.

The doctors cut him open and

sewed him up like deaths purse.

Even the visiting nurse who came

to bathe his bones took fright:

He bit me, she said. Maybe

you should get a Jewish nurse!

At the end there were only the few of us.

I crouched beside him on the bed,

a terrible silence in the room,

my hand on his still-warm bird breas

I remembered his songs and stories,

how he loved to dance at weddings,

the famous waltz, the comic shtick,

and the broken mandolin he left me

that I never learned to play.

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Running on Clean Paws

Gertrude Morris

Dogs are the truest lovers:

she goes into a shop, he barks, and barks:Come back! Dont leave me!

At last she comes through the door.

Now the joy ballet begins,

the leaps and the kisses.

In the Village dog run, I watch

them play. Its Christmas Eve,

but they dont know it.

They are unruly saints,

devoted, but not celibate, wearing

a single hair shirt all their lives.

Companionably they mark my scent:

old female of her species,

odor pungent-growing bitter.

Ive come to sing carols in the Squar

to join with childrens pure voices,

and the golden blare of brasses.

Trees bear their burden of stars;

angels are everywhere.

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A Poet - Geoff Stevens

Nascent ideas are often born of blue moods,

they are blue babies until the poet transfuses them

with his own unique blood, puts new life into them,

repairs the holes in them, gives them new heart,

sends them out to talk to people.

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Something that Takes Over

and Opens You Like a Flower

Joan Payne Kincaid

Becoming a child again

with him

this little boy who sits

cuddled in my sons arms

his eyes are the world

in a rapture

he is the future of meafter I am gone

his mouth is still wordless...

a silent meditation

open to every possibility

vulnerable ecstasy

he gives the generous love

of visionaries

laughs at my child-like transitions

is seized with delight

at our efforts to communicate

turns us into clownshis new and ancient spiritual presenc

teaches how to be.

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To Image - Herman Slotkin

Though I have all the seeing cells and circuits,

I squint when I read to keep the message clear.

Though I have all the walking bones and muscles,

I wobble when I walk to keep the aches in bounds.

Though I havent a shred of imaging cell and tissue,

I exult that images come clear, lithe, and lively.

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Poem - Herman Slotkin

A poem is useful;

it holds in hand a flying fact, feeling, fancy,

touches it, tastes it,

lets its music meander through the mind,

tickle the toes,

then lets it go

knowing it is now always present.

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The Peripatetic Poet Pauses - David Michael Nixonfor Norm Davis

After a hard day of walking around

in the sludge of his life, which he, the state,the money-makers, his relatives and

friends have exuded, after all his notes

are played out in their ringing scribble,

the peripatetic poet pauses,

and the sludge lightens and flows around him,

lifting him in its clear, shining river.

first appeared in HazMat Review, spring/summ

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In the Double Maze - David Michael Nixon

You run into the edges of reason,

jagged and sharp; soon you grow weak

from pain and loss of blood,

but the edges of emotion are no

safer: slow down; watch where you walk.

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Hand Farming the Imagination - David Michael Nixon

There is a core of damp black soil

each of us comes upon inside us,

from which a lush river of bright flowers,

pale tubers and rank fungi tumbles.

We struggle to harvest them and carry

their delicate weight back to the surface,

where our hands may offer them to strangers.

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Song of Autumn in Vermont

Bruce Hesselbach

Frost lays down in patches

surrounding bushes and treesbeneath the freezing stars.

When morning breaks

the row of white pines on the lake

awaken to the crackling fires

of the blueberry bushes below them,

dark red flames lapping atpagoda columned pines.

Even the lake itself

echoes: Fire! Fire!

Spring peepers softly trill

from hidden crannies.

An ancient toad, gaunt and warted, s

belatedly to delve in the chilly earth.

A smoldering orange glow emerges

small at first, near the tops of mount

then runs riot over the wild valleys.

Bright yellow blasts of

leafy sunshine leap down

the cliffs of ridges

like mighty waterfalls.On the granite top of the low

remote forest mountain

the pitch pines harbor lingering

birds, yellow vireos singing

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back and forth mystical translations

from the final symphony of leaves.

Blue sky and sunlight

flood down

over the soft green pitch pine.

Tiny flying insects swarm aloft,

hovering over its branches,

catching the sunbeams,

glowing white like pale fairies,

dancing in the blue sky above the festive tree.In the forests below

leaves tumble without ceasing:

beeches, maples, birches, oaks.

Dreary clouds roll in, darkening the earth.

Twilight rumbles,

smelling of mushrooms.

The golden mantle of the hills

grows bald, withered, threadbare.Brown oak leaves swirl

in the clammy shivering wind.

Piercing November rains

pelt the earth unmercifully.

Rain pounds out its fury on the roof.

Gusts of wind rageagainst our sanctuary.

Sheltered, for now, from the storm,

the two of us draw near

and whisper dreams of summer love

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Thread - John Sokol

You fall asleep beneath a willow

in autumn woods near pine-pitched

water. When you awake, you discover

an orb weaver has chalked some lines

from a nearby branch to your shoulder,

a few silken joists for a web.

As the sun sinks below the treeline,

frogs and whippoorwills, crickets

and doves entice you to stay. You linger

awhile as you watch your lodger

pay her silver down. From beyond

the far edge of the forest, the groans

of an eighteen-wheeler struggling to

a grade on the distant highway.

As you leave the dark woods, you sc

your way through strands of thread

that connect everything to everything

from Appalachia Vo

Decemb

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White River - Fredrick Zydek

The river yawns

deep into the fog,

slips through it,a promise of light

seeping through

the long darkness.

It knows the names

of leaves, reasonsferns and ivy

bloom like warriors

along the shore,

what the lily knows

of the waiting valley

where slope and shallow

swirl until the moon

walks naked and solemnamong them.

One might treat these waters

like a skin,

or wade to the depths

of small fishesuntil their little dreams

droop behind

the minds love

of wonder.

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...and speak of the dazzling wings (Wallace Stevens) - R. Yurman

I dream that finallyI start crying for my parents deaths

as I had not when they died

but my parents are my childrenIm crying overmy real daughter and son

and do not want to stop.

I wake from that dream weepingand I cannot stop.

As my eyes dryI feel the air burningI feel the day rising

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Bedfellow - M.M.Nichols

my heart

talks to itself

behind my back

it knows

things I dont

want to believe

it writesvariations

on my themes

we almost

never see

eye to eye

becausei turn around

and ignore its

true love

which is myself

this quick chilled flesh

but were

still together

tossed and turning

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Fifty - Kit Knight

I was 42 when my first book

was published and I inscribed

my parents copy,To the ones

who loved me first. I

never doubted

they loved me, even though

there were times

they didnt like me.The fiftieth anniversary

merits gold gifts

and it should because

the seventh, tenth and

20th hurdles have already

passed. Statistically,

those three anniversaries

produce the most

divorces. Seventh,because the monogram towels

--along with the glow--

have worn out. Tenth,

because they wonder, Gee,

is this all there is?

And twentieth becausethe kids are gone

and suddenly, What

do we talk about? Even if

I wasnt there, Ive watched

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my parents

handle it all. Helen,

my mother, daughter of

immigrants, didnt

speak Englishuntil first grade. Basil,

my father, learned

--first hand--

how not to abuse children and

make them vomit in fear.

But he neverlocked his own kids

into a closet or beat us

until blood ran down

our legs. My brother and I

are grateful. Before

my parents were engaged,

my dad had the name HELEN

tattooed in a pink rose

on his right arm. I knowthe story and strength

behind that American Beauty.

Today, drawings of roses

decorate my study,

and I dont believe

its a coincidence.

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Tiffany at 21 - Kit Knight

I wrote on her card:

Happy Birthday To What Was

Happy Birthday To What Is andHappy Birthday To What Will Be.

Her dad chose a card

with a sentiment about her

endless possibilities.

My daughter is in

her third year of collegeand has yet

to turn in a grade lower than

4.0; her scholarship committee

is delighted. We mailed

Tiffanys present south;

shes a student at the University

of Arkansas. We gave her

a book bag stuffed with gifts:

candy and stickers for What Was,a proletarian novel for What Is

and a sweater for What Will Be.

Tiffany is going to spend

a month in England this summer

and shell need something

warm. Something I wantedfor her. Over 700 of my poems

have been published

and my daughter stars

in more than half of them,

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even if she isnt named.

When my daughter left,

I learned

what grief meant. I was

bulging with misery. The firstpoem I attempted after she made

her 2,000 mile trip to Fayetteville

was titled, The Mother

Of The Only Civilian Killed In

The Battle of Gettysburg, 1863.

That mother also sharedher body

with a blond daughter. I mourned

for 11 months after

Tiffany left home. Left me.

Now shes looking forward

to London, followed by five weeks

in Korea and Im sending her book b

that yell in big red letters:

DEDICATED TO POST MENOPAUSAL HEA

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Weather of the Soul

Albert Huffstickler

Grey, warm, this not-quite-

fall day, late October, noleaves falling yet, justone or two cool days. Theseasons missing us. Andthings pile up on me oldthoughts held too long,old sorrows too long grieved

through the hot summer.Theres no catharsis inheat or in these half-hearteddays of damp warmth. Iwant blistering cold and

the wind howling at mywindows, hot food on thestove soup or beans andI want to lie listening

in the dark while thetrees tear their hair. Ineed the days short andmournful and the longnights pierced with longingfor all I never had. Ineed to have thingsdrying around me. I needthis autumn bad.

from Links Tunbridge Wells, E

#4, Autum

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The Odds and Ends Man

Albert Huffstickler

Id like to be a better

personbut I made myself up

out ofodds and ends. And

some of theodds are missing and

some of

the ends. But it wasthe best I could doafter the explosion(which is still

happening)

after I was blownpiecemeal,

willy-nilly intonowhere

Coming back I grabbedwhat I could

and pieced it togetherbut some things neces-

sarily gotleft out. I pause

momentarilysometimes between steps

waiting.for the next impulse,

waitingfor a foot to appear

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andmove me forward. I

forget alot even while things

are happening.But Ive learned to

piece mylife together though

there areholes always. Once

long agomy life was seamlessbut that was before

the explosion.Now Im just debris.Im whats left after

the fall.Still falling, I re-

assemble myselffrom moment to moment

out ofthe flotsam available,each time a little

different,always in motion, always

becoming,the stepchild of chaos.Look for me out where the

stars began,a cosmic gypsy, the odds

and ends man.from - The R

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol 19 no 9