Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 21 no 7

8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 21 no 7

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2000

Ju

Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream


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Waterways: Poetry in the MainstreamJuly 2000

The habit is, for a thoughtless and romanticyouth of each sex to come together,to see each other for a few times andunder circumstances full of delusion,

and then to vow to each other eternal attachment

from POLITICAL JUSTICE (1793)William Godwin


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 21 Number 7 July, 2000Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara FisherThomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

c o n t e n t s

Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $25 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (incpostage). Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelWaterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127

2000, Ten Penny Players Inc.

Joy Hewitt Mann 4-6

Melissa Forbes 7

Bruce W. Niedt 8-9

John Grey 10-11Gerald Zipper 12

Paul Grant 13-14

Will Inman 15-16

Herman Slotkin 17

Lyn Lifshin 18David Michael Nixon 19-20

Kit Knight

R. Yurman

Ida Fasel 2

Geoff StevensAlbert Huffstickler 2


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1805 etching from The Monthly

William Godwin1756-1836


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July, 1973 - Joy Hewitt Mann

Where is that room now, that bedthat rocked so joyously, those

flowered curtains outshining van Gogh,that wall-to-wall of molten lava?

Do you remember the blinds, howthey striped you as you lay brightand grey, bright and grey like a psychedelic zebra?

And the clock? . . .

a three-foot sunburst rising on Princeof Wales, telling us that twowas too late, and the officewould be waiting when you returned.

Now there's some modern motel, brictwo-storied, hemmed inby more and more of the same;

bed burnedcurtains rotted awaycarpet stained and faded in someYork Street room

and the clock . . .

Why did you choose that souvenir?

I held your wristnot wanting you to go. Whereis that wrist now? Where did thatwantinggo?

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It is the moon - Joy Hewitt Mann

that fits like a white circle on

black paper; or a pupil-less eye in a dark face.It is the magnet of a moonon a dark fridge; a roundhole in a black curtainthat hides us from eternity.

That night it was only a moon, acold planet we learned about in schooland the sky was a mother's voicecalling us home.

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We walked linked through the cornfree arms swinging against the shushing leavesstroking the silken tassels with tingling palmsfingers conscience of being, of

needing something concrete to touch.

Our emotions collided in thoseclenched hands; theycopulated with the rhythm of ourwalking. Wewere as innocent as young whores

in our longing for something beyond the corn,the sky,

the moon.

Why I should think of you,a child, now that I havechildren of my own,I do not know. It is

a perversion more stimulatingthan a Chinese egg, roundand white as a full moon pusheddeep into my inner sky. Why

should I think of you, staringfrom my bedroom window, stroking

silken tassel with tingling palmhearing the shush of my own blood

wondering if it isthe moon?

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At the End of the EveningMelissa Forbes

The smile which at the beginningHad bubbled and frothedReadily to the surfaceIs now gleaming whiteAnd tucked in at the cornersLike a hospital bed.And the armsAttached to the hands

Noodling their way between my fingersAre tiny pickaxes,Chipping at my crystal-thin veneer.

Their eyes of chilly grapes

GapeAs I shake my wayHand over hand over handToward the bathroom doorThirtyFeetAway.

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Retrieval - Bruce Niedt

Cleaning his desk in New York, he findsthe old manila envelope,corners flaking, broken clasp,psychedelic lettering addressed to himself.Inside, his collected early works he sits and readsall the pages pounded offhis Smith-Corona

in the days of correction tape,before the perfect font.

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The paeans to old love come out florid verses distended with wordslike forever, pledge,eternal, heart, undying.

He winces, then pictures herdark waterfall of pressed-straight hair,brown eyes the genesis of laughter,legs that would wrap him in glory.

He reads one poem aloud, like an incantation,like a magus who summons her

through temporal geography,appearing as though she never turnedher back on him that autumn day,as dry leaves closing behind hercackled bitter good-byes.

Somewhere in Minnesota,in a house just doused with late springshe startles, spills tea on her hand as flies from a jostled mug.

She shudders, as though a dream supprhas tried to flash up through memoryShe mops the puddle with a towel,flicks brown hair behind her ear,and returns to read a poem just writtto her husband,who sits across the round oak table

drinking eternal love.

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Green Airport Farewell - John Grey

This is goodbye.Im moving to Virginia.

Not too hot, not too cold.You love those four seasons.I can stomachtwo and a half of them.Richmonds close enough to New Yorkso I can spend an occasional weekend there,refueling my cultural gas tanks,

and Washingtons just up ninety five aways.You could never leave New England,break out in hiveswhenever you crossRhode Islands bordersand besides, your familys here,that drug, prescribed at birth,

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to be taken regularly forthe rest of your life.I will make new friends.You will reevaluate the old,

shake out the oneswho wear my brand.Maybe theres even a relationship ortwo lying in wait for mesomewhere in the Tidewater.You could even find something in Providence,a brownstone yuppie.

Everything new will foam up around us,insulate us, even act on our moleculesto change what we do, what we think,who we are.Ill forget you ever existed.

Youll wipe me from your mind, your heAnd to think,here we are at the airport,

you pale as rain,

me juggling tears and suitcases,twenty last kisses forold times sake,poignantly whispering how wellremember each other always,practicing for the real thing.

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Front Seat of My Old Pontiac - Gerald Zipper

Her profile lit by the glare of a hot street lamphuddled by the Boardwalk on a Coney Island street

she sat in my old Pontiacmy first true lovecrazed by her lushnessbreathing salt air shreds from ocean swellsshards of laughter at our earsneon stabbing at our eyesCyclone swerves crazily around sharp turns

bells squealI explore the soft crevicesfingers igniting aroused partsscreamingshoutingThis is Forever!but forever forgets.

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Villa Sardonicus - Paul Grant

With half a heart engaging half a mindwhile the other two halves walk the cliffs

under the guiding light of a cartoon moon,

Im trying to balance the books how much will bethe balloon payment on that house Ive leftunoccupied because I was scared of ghosts

when I hear her voice in the other room

of our little apartment, talking to Cowboy, the parrotshe inherited when her brother died of the plague.

(He had inherited it from the lover who gave him hisdeath, who got it from his . . . etc. with a span of overa hundred years, Cowboys heard a lot of Broadway shows)

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Cowboy cocks his head and pretends to careabout anything except Pepperidge Farm Bordeauxcookies coming to him through the bars

of his cage on fingers tempting enough themselves,except he dimly remembers them being attachedto frightening noise should he scythe down on them.

My task being suddenly loathsome, I pad into the room,come up behind her, and put my hands on her shoulders.She shrieks in surprise, and Cowboy,

alarmed out of his dream of jungles, shrieksthe only word he knows, bobbing his beautiful headin abandon over and over as the room fills up with Nevermore!

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her soundings - Will Inman

her father declared his family had novision, but she could make with her voice

a skein of sound, she would plait the soundinto a rope of reach. it stretched insidethose who listened and wrapped around theirsecret knowledge like hungry roots. she wouldretrieve that awareness with her plaitedsoundings. i never quite understood how shedid it, but i could watch her eyes and tell

when shed gained from within me what i myselfhad forgotten or had never known was there. ididnt know how to sound back into her forwhat was mine. she would weave that knowinglike a rug of green rushes, would tread thatresonance the way an adept can walk on water.shed dance to rhythms i had no ears for. my

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heart moved to a tamer beat. not so with her:she could take a quiet pulse and swiften itinto a tarantella. with spiders bite, too,for weaker listeners.

later, i was able totell her no, was strong enough not to listen,not to allow her sound to enter me, could cutoff her voice like hair, let it fallbetween us, such winter leaves. her mouthwould shape curses i refused to hear, idlaugh and wade her fallen shadows, theydsting my feet, toughen my step. i used herto grow by, how she swore, her sweated lavascorching my ankles.

strong enough now tostand outside her sounds, so, i can

join in her reaching with all things

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Toe Talk - Herman Slotkin

You said: You are hateful.And I shrivelled to crumpled shardsinto my crazed shell.

When we lay down in silence,wrapped in our private hurts,the pad of your little toe touched my calfin velvet slide from knee to ankle.

Toe talk is truer than tongue talk.

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On the DayMy Mother Eloped

Lyn Lifshin

fled, as if shegave it more thoughtshed never do it,left with a smallsuitcase in my fathersbrothers car today,July 1, heading

toward Boston, neversupposing what wasahead even in thesummer would be aschilly as the comingtwilight with snow,

She will become thewoman who turns herback on the man shechose so she couldntbe even more temptedby the man she couldnot marry, will reachfor her girls instead,two beauties likecharms on a braceletshe will lose. Greenthat will become herfavorite color in the lastweeks of her life will be

hard to find as anythigrowing in the parkunder the cold. The bher daughters try to lcloser could be what fand filled her, somethshe knows is wild, somthing she cant touchor keep

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In Honeymoon Light - David Michael Nixon

So far, we move across the thresholdwithout the slightest feeling of darkness.

The sun is all around us, high noon;beyond the threshold is the skylightno shadow anywhere around us.

We do not see the lintels shadowpoised on our heads, our shoulders, feet.

first appeared in Salonika (Septembe

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The Greatest Kisser in the Northern Hemisphere - Kit Kni

For more than 20 yearsIve been telling my husband

we can always make extra moneyby putting himin a booth and charginga dollar a kiss. Wed haveto keep a bucket of water handybecause his lips can starta fire. Kissing me,smiling to beat the angels,Arthur says, Itd beheartbreaking to wake up

without you.

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Our Beginnings CannotKnow Our Ends

R Yurman

The first time he touched herhe expected the usualbrusque stop

Wet and open more thanany other in his small experience

If I give myself to you

she whisperedit cant be here on the floor we need some place private

On his narrow cotthey strained togetherthe light in her eyesthe soft wrap of her armsa nest he pledge to re-visit

Beside the car that wouldtake her to the stationthey exchanged a quick hand squeeze

The glance that flared between them

lit their secret

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Widow - Ida Fasel

I was forest green, you were city goldor was it the other way around?

Our compatible colors made unison phraseof kindred tones and failed occasions.

In our first house we first said ours.

You made happiness a serious thing,a grotto of amethysts whose deepviolet blue developed the theme of lovein music of bright and dark variationsenough and more than enough to sustainthe soul silently, passionately listening.

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You filed quarrels away, rare and fewas rocks collected from the moon.The difference between responsibleand culpable kept tormenting me.

You never complained of airport delaysand undigestible meals. Travel was good.Risk for you was a daily willing job.You had a face that would reassureanyone meeting you at 2 a.m. in a city streetthough you were not likely to be outat that hour. You had a funny bone,and it helps me, sorting things out.

You are in my custody now.Hereinafter has become here. As in the park.You are the little boy looking down on mefrom high on his fathers shoulders:

Dont you have a little boy to bring?And I say, I have you.

All that was possible of the intangible

important to us is possible still,in the fullness of time as it wasand space open to becoming.

Put to the test, knot in my throatnothing can be done about. At tablean unset place. Glass to glass.To be greater than the sum of my parto stretch myself like a Giacometti fiwhose veins no technician can findin a blood test, but whose headis somewhat within reach of the ineff

Nimble bubbles lead on, and we laugh.

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Wow - Geoff Stevens

Wow! Wow! Wow!Now! Now! Now!

Vow! Vow! Vow !Row! Row! Row !

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Filmscript - Albert Huffstickler

It was just like in the movies:we looked at each once and it had

already happened. We had to runto find a bed to catch up withwhat had already happened and thenthe next day and the next it wouldbe flashing before us and wewould be running along behindimitating what we had alreadyseen. It was beautiful. It asmore than beautiful: it wasperfect, just as perfect as thesight of her waking each morningto her there in the first light ever.

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No, it was more than perfect: itwas the only way it could beand it was the way it had beeneven before it happened to us.

It was how you are when yourein time and beyond it at thesame time. And for a long time,it was beyond the reach ofanyone else to mar or interferewith. Only something happenedand then it wasnt anymore and

it wasnt as though this oneworld had died but all thewords in the universe at once.And I was standing somewhereoutside of it all wondering

how a heart that had turned toashes could still beat. AndI finally decided that it was

just like in the movies and in

the movies the screen went darkand you sat there a minute ora year and then slowly the lightscame up but softly and then

you walked out into the day,moving very slowly while yousorted out who you were and

where you were and what partof it was real after all.

from Cerberus #XXV, 1997, Arca27


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2001 THEMES

January, 2001 (deadline December 1, 2000):Last night I had an oboe dream

Maxwell Bodenheim, Bringing Jazz

February, 2001 (deadline January 1, 2001):Is it a tale you strum?

Alfred Kreymborg, Improvisation

March, 2001 (deadline February 1, 2001):The spring blew trumpets of color;Her green sang in my brain . . .

Harry Kemp Blind

April, 2001 (deadline March 1, 2001):Piping in silvery thin

Sweet staccatoOf children's laughterLola Ridge The Ghetto

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ISSN 0197-4777

published 11 times a year since 1979very limited printingby Ten Penny Players, Inc.(a 501c3 not for profit corporation)

$2.50 an issue

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 21 no 7