Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol.24no.11

8/13/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol.24no.11

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, December 2003

It would be niceto love one more womanin that way thats morestarlight than fact,that is like snow fallinginside your heart.

A l b e r t H u f f s t i c k l e rfrom Notes for a Death Chant

Waterways, February 91

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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 24 Number 11 December, 2003Designed, 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 -- $33 for 11 issues.Sample issues $3.50 (includes postage).

Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelopeWaterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127

2004, Ten Penny Players Inc. (This magazine is published 8/04)

http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

Ida Fasel 4-12Joy Hewitt Mann 13-14Simon Perchik 15-17Herman Slotkin 18

John Grey 19-20

Joanne Seltzer 21-23Fredrick Zydek 24-25Paul Grant 26-27Robert K. Johnson 28

Bill Roberts 29-30

David Jordan 31-3Robert Cooperman 34-4Felicia Mitchell 50-Photo of Ruth Richards

Barbara Fisher 5


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Bonnard on Location Ida Fasel

He worked fast to catch the light commonplaces in light landscapes like jewels looking inthrough a window, rich green, the skyas true to blue as blue could mean

to one sufficient in his home and art.

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A door ajar, rooms of a house,Simple things going on in a house

A dog, a cat, a woman at table: Marthe.Principally Marthe. Marthe inthe stillness of her bath, shimmeringin gleams of yellow, golden orange,coral rose like some unearthly being,or guest of her glass, a shining one,her robe forming itself to its foldslike a rainbow, arching halo by halo.Marthe, a hundred paintings of her.From 30 on she never aged.

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Color tells the truth of the world,

black and white only its paradoxes.The luminous takes its text from within,every brushstroke a reverence.Sparks of color, luminous expanses,bright molecules under physicalpressure of feelings, calmed as he gavefamiliar things the facts of light they have.

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Violet cool inside.

No need to tell the days apart.Sitting time, lying down time, eating time,mirror time. Color and Marthe.To his friends a stingy womanwith a stinging voice. Color spiralsinward on swirls of color.The way he knew her. For life.

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Dali in Love Ida Fasel

The stairwell of his mind endlessly

captivated him to climb. Stars madestrobe lights of dreams abundance.Innards dangled from the immense bellyof the universe, limp and solid.His resless eyes pierced the dark abyssof consciousness and gave thingsnot of the world their shape rapture with a reality of its own kind.Only Daly doing this. Dali Dali Dali

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loves Gala better than his mother, better

than his father, better than Picasso,and even better than money.That serene face, that glowing body,that orderly mind finely tuned to histempered his inner tumult and put boundsto his boundless careening.My wife, brush never pell-mell.

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Her face in profile, leaves sprouting fromher head. Tree of his creative life.Her body in full form, front or back.Sometimes glimpsed in a surreal landscapeor bordered like a Valentine in laceor abiding like a guardian angel: mad about her.

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Brushstrokes to wait out, thenglass to glass,bubbles nimbly pacing a laugh.

Note: The italicized words

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Out of Water Joy Hewitt Mann

We used to walk to the city,four miles to window-shopat the Billings Mall.In Loblaws,wed buy salami, chunks of cheese,small French sticks and milkin waxed cartonsto wash it down.

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Standing in the parking lot, your hair

as long as mine, bothin beads,our feet sandaledeven in the chill of late October,we must have drawn attention.

I only think of that now.

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Simon Perchik

This window sweetening the air

hangs as if some fruitwould light your room again

even the walls wont break offfixed on a window that risesto be lost, its tears

falling one upon the othergo over it slowly in timeyour kisses and the glass shoe

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you see through in time your foot will harden

take hold, become the branch

that rings the worldnever letting gothe last thing you saw

in time your whispersfurther than great mountainslay exhausted in the snow

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just stop and the air thins outloses its way a fragrancesaddened by the white thread

still graceful in the sun by the hair and thighs

and mouths that fit exactly.

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How Do I Love? Herman Slotkin

My love is a browsing bearnibbling ripe black berries,longing for your honey.

My love is a grand pianolatent with lilting numbers,awaiting your touch.

My love is a wayward windwhistling in the eaves for your notice,howling in the drains for your attention.

Isnt anybody home?

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It Could Have Been Different John Grey

If I ever wondered what happens

to the unpicked apples,then heres my answer . . .a veritable stew of rot,crunching and sloshing underfoot.Its fruit I could trip up on,fruit that makes me think of corpses,fruit that even the crows,despite their undertaker black coats,leave alone.

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The unpicked women and men,however, do better.

We walk through November apple orchards,arms slung through each other.We havent dropped to earth,to never bloom again.We dont turn to mush,and go to much useless waste.

We just ask, How are things with you?like were both still on the tree,like staying put is harvesting.

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My Father the Tennis Player Joanne Seltzer

Sammy met Ethel

on the Belle Isle courtsduring happy daysnow remembered asthe roaring twenties.When their game beganto get seriousshe aimed for the net,connected with the air,sought the score of love.

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He complained, told hertennis is aboutthe stroke not the spin.

After that she wonalmost every setwhile he lost proudly.

And they married.And they were happy.

And I came along.And they rejoiced.And the jealous godssoon took him away.

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He turned into words

written on stone, grassenhanced by flowers,metaphoric youthassociatedforever with clay.

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Thoroughly Married Fredrick Zydek

My dreams still cant keep their hands off you.Its nearly thirty years now, and Im still puttingyour name to ink and lost in the mystery of yourtouch. Strange how the sweet history betweenus has become more than half the matter.

Your kiss is still the flint of meaty poems, and your

smile continues to be the key that opens metaphorslike small and perfect lockets. It is not so muchthat we are one soul in two bodies. It is more.We are the nest for the others journey.

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This is no fragile bond. It is deeper than bone.We have buried each others dead, wandered

great deserts seeking fine and shining kingdomsonly to learn they were always within us, and lockedourselves away from the world when it got too busy.

Sometimes this dance deals more with energy thanwith form. We are as willing to be with one another

as rain is eager to gladden the leaves and lawn.At night, when we read ourselves to sleep, I revelin knowing weve lost the fear and need of the hunt.

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True/False Love Paul Grant

That woman says I should call her, that I must.She really wants to talk to me, she says,

she has secrets to tell me, and shell understandmine if I choose to tell them to her tonight.She says she knows what I want, knows what I need.Her hair falls over one eye like Veronica Lakes(an actress whose name would strike no chord in her),and the tops of her breasts are glistening with whatis doubtless supposed to be passionate sweatbut is probably Wesson oil. She lies on her sideher telephone number and general intentionsspelled out in a four-letter acronymhovering over the bottom of her teddy.

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I wouldnt touch her with somebody elses dick,

but maybe I should at least call her.Its only $2.99 for the first three minutes,and Im over eighteen with a ragged credit cardno closer to being maxed out than my heart is,and maybe just maybe she knows something I dont.Probably not . . . but stranger things have happened.

Stranger things have happened to me, as a matterof pathetically fallacious fact. So maybeI should call her. God knows, the nights are longerevery year. Maybe I should at least call her.

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Night Time Robert K. Johnson

Now, if we undress

in front of each others eyes,

our awareness blunt as a slap of our bodys every blemish

reddens our cheeks hotter

than they were on that first night

forty years ago.

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go round and round a dusty dirt oval.I could tell shed have a cheeseburger too,if I ordered one myself.She only ate half of hers, explainingpartially why she was so slender.I held her cool hand in the car and kissed heron the front porch of the house where she lived.She said goodnight, smiled, andmet me with urgency when I kissed hera second time, then hurried in the house.

Jim thanked me, which wasnt necessary.Pheenie couldnt find words, which was okay.I told them Id enjoyed meeting Mary.Wed rehearsed everything excepthow wed feel when she died a few weeks later.

First published in the April 2001 issue of O30


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Scarlet Woman David Jordan

I bought my shy wife a nightgownfor her birthday.I had little money, knew nothing about cloth,so the nightgownwas cheap and flimsy, but it whispered to mein passions voice.It was scarlet. Lacy at the chest and neck.

Diaphanous.When she slipped it on, the shadow of her body,pale, enticing,shimmered through a cloud of scarlet.

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We made love, nightgown bunched at her breasts,slid into sleepentwined in damp embrace. Rising from bednext morning,she hesitated, opened the nightgown, peered inside.

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Oh, she whispered. Oh, no. I looked up frommy pillow.Im all red, she said, lifting the gown.Streaks of scarlet

trailed down her body, across tiny breasts,over sloping belly,along slender legs, creeks of red slicing soft,milky countryside.I laughed. Tears leaped to her cheeks.She dashed off,locked herself in the bathroom. I knocked,

tried to apologize.The shower hissed to life. She washedaway every traceof scarlet woman, tossed my nightgown in thetrash.The marriage lasted five years.

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The Long Black Veil: On His Deathbed, Emmett RitchfieRobert Cooperman

I spoke not a word though it meant my life,for I had been in the arms of my best friends wife.

The Long Black Veil

I wanted to tell my wife,Now that my lifes running out in spasmssooty as our coal-fouled river,all I can think of is the unhappiness

I heaped on you when I failed to say,Go to Miller, find some joy in this lifethats all we know of heartache and glory.

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I had my own guilty secretin Grace OBrien, but feared scandal morethan I loved my mothers buxom servant.Worse, an envious mastiff,I made a gilded prisoner of Emmain my dark and bitter mansion.

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Worst, I wanted Miller to myself,the friend of my childhood and youth,

the boy I played Indians and sworea jackknife-bloody brotherhood with.Still, I let him hang for a murderI knew he didnt commit,raging at his betrayal of our boyhood,when he and Emma would steal away

for passionate interludes,deluded that I didnt know.

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For all that, I tried to beg forgivenessof Emma, but what fell from my carrion lips

was that Id glimpsed Millerin the life beyond, and hed cursedher cowardice for not shouting in courtthey were together when Edwards was murdered.

The dark rumbling of a monster from hellClaims me, for that last act of lying malice.

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The Long Black Veil: Emma Ritchfield, As Her Husband Lies DyRobert Cooperman

But sometimes at night when the cold winds moanIn a long black veil she mourns over my bones.

The Long Black Veil

Emmett raved I would smother himwith a pillow: Vengeance,he rasped, for your lover hanging

for a murder he didnt commit.

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Ive seen him on the Other Side,

he continued, after a coughrattled him like a coal car.He curses your cowardice,a last spasm lifted my husband,like a canarys frantic wingsat the first whiff of gas

and he was gone.

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Strangely, I wept,though wed been enemiesfrom the momentMiller stood upon the gallows,Emmett silent about his innocence:vengeance for our betraying him.But I was no better:

wild as a ferret in Millers armswhile the banker was murdered elsewhere;still, at the trial, I too said nothing.

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Deaths grim smile widenedon my husbands stretched-thin face.More tears poured from me, tornbetween wanting to spit at him,and knowing the truth he spat at me,adrift now, without the manI had sworn to love, but couldnt,

even before I was first warmedby Millers smile.

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The Long Black Veil: Emma Ritchfield, at Her Husbands FunerRobert Cooperman

I spoke not a word though it meant my lifeFor I had been in the arms of my best friends wife.

The Long Black Veil

Go quietly into the ground,dear Emmett, and find a peaceyou never knew and I never gave youonce you brought me home

to these coal pocked hills,when I discovered, to my wedded shock,that I opened like a mountain rose, onlywith your boyhood friend, Miller Waggoner.

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Though you never forgave me loving him,nor his betraying your eternal bondof Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn,you kept your own mistress,and even on your deathbed cursed me,while I had to stop myself from flauntingmy consuming fire in Millers arms

that in yours never even singed me.

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Dear Emmett, I sob now while the minister drones on about dust,ashes, and resurrections uncertain hope my tears jagged as chunks of quartz,can we not forgive each other?Your answer: the silent clatterof freezing curtains of rain.

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Still, I pray that you and Miller claspblood brothers hands in Paradise,

grip fishing poles, a jug of goodmountain liquor, and findthe trout stream woodsmen dream of.

While I conjure that sweet fairy tale,

I tell myself youd have forgiven meat the last, had you the strength to speak.

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The Long Black Veil: Nettie Greenblatt, Widowed PeddRobert Cooperman

I spoke not a word though it meant my life,For I had been in the arms of my best friends wife.

The Long Black VeilWhile everyone else in this coal towntossed me coins, afraid my touch meanttheyd have to scrub off my Jew-dirt,Mr. Waggoners housekeeperserved me tea in her kitchen, clean

As my mothers house on erev Pesach.She craved someone to sigh with her:her heart beating for her employerlike a caged wolf banging against its bars.

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Shed dream of him, pressed againstmy yielding softness, while I smiled:shes all elbows and knees hardand sharp as a blacksmiths tongs.While she cried, I thought of my Hiram,and our peddling the roads for years,until he sighed, How I love you,

and died in my arms, heavyas the stones of the smashed Temple.

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J F li i Mi h ll


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Joy Felicia Mitchell

Joy comes in a bottle.

You can buy it at any store.At the supermarket, it smells like lemon.You can pour it in water and let the fumes riselike incense in a temple.At the department store,it smells like roses and costs more

but if you refrigerate the bottlejoy will last as long as you want it to.

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You can take it out and dab some onany time youre in the mood,and if you mix lemon and rosesin the same kitchen theres no tellingthe height to which you may soar.

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Documents

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol.24no.11