Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol 19 no 5

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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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol 19 no 5

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