Waterways Poetry in the Mainstream: volume 24 number 8

7/30/2019 Waterways Poetry in the Mainstream: volume 24 number 8

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Septem

2003


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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, September 2003

So you walk along looking at the ground, following an invisible trail

down streets, up alleys, across parking lots and on,

moving with that patient, solemn shuffle

thats the universal gait of the poor man

eyes on the ground, that little piece of ground right in front of his

the only piece of earth in this whole worldhe can call his own.

A l b e r t H u f f s t i c k l e rfrom Looking at the GroundWaterways, January 92


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 24 Number 8 September, 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

2003, Ten Penny Players Inc.

http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

Joy Hewitt Mann 4Ida Fasel 5-6Paul Grant 7-8Susanne Olson 9

Fredrick Zydek 10-11

Geoff Stevens 12Sylvia Manning 13-14David Jordan 15Felicia Mitchell 16-18

Dudley Laufman 19

Jane K. Kretschmann 2Adriana DiGennaro 2Patricia Wellingham-JonesBarbara Fisher


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I have passed him;slumped against the sidewalkwith ragged music in his fingersand felt his breath . . .and heard the panic in my heart.

I have seen them;

young and feveredwith children in their handsexchanging cherub smiles for coins . . .and felt the panic in my heart.

And I have seen her . . .

the woman rushing in the glher face reflected throughthe mannequins like sister .

and seen the panic in my ey

4

Homeless Joy Hewitt Mann


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Quilting Ida Fasel

More atom bombs assembling,more missiles intended deadly:The daily paper whiplashes the house.I walk the burning coals of TV newsbarefoot.

If I were a Stradivarius Id bea voice of eloquence and quality.

Id make myself heard round the world,and the world would listen. Id bethe final giving, the utmost influence,pitched to the truest health universal good will.

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But Im only a penny needle, fingerspricked all over from the smallfine stitch trying to hold

the patchwork pieces in pattern.Im only a woman meeting the eyesof another woman huddled ona street corner, behind a scrawl:TRAVELING PLEASE

GIVE ME YOUR HELP.Making the mysterious connectionsof a selfsame look.Traveling, too.

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Schoontree Paul Grant

I heard the scattered, muffled applause

of rain in the banjo treesand under that, a sawyer fiddlewhistling the night away.The nails began their holy exitfrom the wood, a distant psalm

at a time, and wouldnt you know,the house began to whisperas the wind got in.

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A walking bass padded around the dark,not even waking the owl-haunted mice,and a blue guitar dropped to open D

settled in to serenadewhatever could manage to returncome morning

with its bluesandman harmonics asmy broken-hearted dog and Isailed off on the endlesslyfresh salt sea.

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Alone Susanne Olson

Do you want to go with meto the mountain my home?Beware the road is steepand full of stonesarduous and fraught with dangerhot under scorching sun at timesand sometimes ice.

Will only conquers fear and toilsweat, aching limbsthe straining heart.There is no easy wayreward of hope.

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Dreams That Begin at the Still Center Fredrick Zyd

In some dreams our names peel away

more easily than old clothes;we become slippery things wanderingthrough the motions of color.

In these dreams the dead refusetheir graves and go among us singing.Language grows so weary with noiseit finds a way to become music.

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There are no masks in this place.Each face is naked as the day

it was born. Here time and doubtmutate into what waits in all of us.

Sometimes these dreams let us beginagain at the still center. What movestowards the outer edges is all we need

ever know about the art of becoming.

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We are too close to the ground Geoff Stevens

to get a clear view of it,

astronauts can best seethe way around itdistance is a great map maker.

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Wakes in the Rio Grande Bravo Sylvia ManningBoy behind parents walking bridge across riverbetween countries both trashed plastically,

polystyrenetically, awfully and for allhis life if not for all of theirs or ours

Boy wants someone to see countless swimming ducksin river in late gray morning, dark plumaged ducksin nearly smoke black river water cleaner thanonce upon a less littered time (forgetting banks)

because these are many happy ducksnot trying to swim to moreplastically United Statesbut leaving perfect wakes, each, as theycollectively head nowhere except

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as the days sun travelssomewhere above dingy cloud coverabove gray but perfect estelas/wakes

beneath, beyond the boywhose mother in rapid sound-waves wacks the air to airthat no one should have the right to voice an opinion(quien sabe porque?) unconnected with their own daily life,that its not their business to do so and wont stop talking andnobody will stop walking while shes talking between

countries to let him stop to watch this happening inthe Rio Grande, el Rio Bravo, so

he runs to catch up.

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Love May ComeAnd Love May Go

ButSisters Are Forever

David Jordan

says the tiny sign trimmed in white lace,

bordered with red roses hangingon our refrigerator door.

She has four sisters.

Family bloodwarms her,and them.But as the loverwho camefrom the cold

and someday maybe told to go,I wish lovemeant as much as bloo

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The angel of death disguised as a park benchFelicia Mitchell(for Sylvie Rosenthal)

Its time to rest,to stop shuffling your bird-boned feetdown sidewalks and across streetsand through alleys

where men who look just like younod their blessings.Theres a woman with a chisel in her hand.She wants to reshape your brow.All those furrows could be alabaster-smooth.

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One touch, and she will remind you:there is rest for the weary.Listen to the advice the world gives you.

The sparrow on your shouldercould be a sign.

The crow cawing at the sun could be just as rightas the cashier at the last coffee house you sat at.Will that be all, sir? she asked.That will be all, you said.

All all all all the crow caws.The sparrow shudders.In front of you, the woman with the chiselpoints to a park bench.She wants you to sit down,

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to rest your bird-boned feet,so she can reshape your brow.Next to her, the angel of death disguised as a park bench

beckons you like a mother.Your mother, or god, your god-like mother.

There is rest for the weary.Have a seat and let the sculptor heal you.By the time you leave this earth,

there will be no trace of it in your flesh,just one more statue in the parkencircled with pigeons who will never go hungryand sparrows.

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Directions Dudley LaufmanThere have beenmany discussions

on the best wayto get to Alewife.I favor Rt 3 and 2being as howthat is the way I knowand besides it

has that greatview of Bostonas you come down the hillon the Arlington Belmont line,and it goes by the pondwhere I grew up

can see my old house from ther

You prefer Rt 93

no construction going on& make your way cross lotsthrough stop lightsalong the Mystic River.This is your way.You pore over maps

plot the short cutsfiguring the best way.These are roads thatyou may travel alone one day.You have to get used to them.

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South Street Park at Dusk Jane K. KretschmannI.

From where I stop with my dog, he looks like a child

lingering on the sidewalk,the same height as the mailbox he stands behind.As we walk closer,I see his too short legs and round shoulders,and know he is the midgetwho rents down the street. I watch him bendinto the red plastic hamper,gathering cans into the black bag he holds close.I turn and takethe long way home, embarrassed by his need.

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II.

Are you okay? I ask this time,then louder, more demanding, Sir, are you all right?

He lies on the picnic table, legs pulled tight, hugging his chest.

Then my stomach gives a lurch: his head rests in a deep red puddle.Suddenly he jerks. Yeah, yeah, ok, he says,lifting his head from the crushed red cap beneath.

I didnt mean to startle you. You are all right, I add,then turn away without awaiting his reply.Dont, Belle, I say, though she has done nothing wrong.

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III.

I see him again, as I walk Belle the next week.Across the soccer field, intent, stooping slightly,

he seems to be pulled along by some low dog,back and forth, reading the field at his feet.

Before his coming I found coins, pennies mostly,once a quarter, a childs bracelet, a key ring, a pin.Now my eyes sweep the horizon for the grace of sunset

and the darkening heavens for Venus to wish on.

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New York Sketchbook Adriana DiGennaro

I can be here and know the streets of New Yorkknow the repetition

of cigarette butts, black dots of gum,stagnant pools of brown water,dirty paper

sometimes Saturday-morning vomitsplashed onto the asphaltof sidewalks, gray square after gray square

I can be here and know the streetsthat took me uptown, downtown,on routes I never could navigate wellSpring, Mercer, Fulton, Front

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how they lay sadly under the heftof smog and pedestrians pushing, pressing

I can be here and know

the way feet complain after hoursspent running errandshow they ache when you shift your weightat the orange Dont Walk

I can be herewithout missing those streets

their weariness that alwaysreflected my ownwhen I looked down dreamingof dirt and emerald grass.

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AT THE BOTTOM OF A CLIFFPatricia Wellingham-Jones

Like an elf lost in magic woodsthe old man huncheson the end of a log.Mist curls around pick-up sticks driftwood jumbled in the cove.Red cap bobbing over long white beard,

clothes blue as the handshe rubs over a firewhich sputters, complaining,in heavy air. A trickle of smokewisps through hemlocks

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and cedars up the cliff where I,searching for sea lions and whales,fall into a fairy tale

instead.

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Documents

Waterways Poetry in the Mainstream: volume 24 number 8