Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 20 no 9

8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 20 no 9

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1999

20th

Annivers

ary

Octo

Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream


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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, October 199

The river is keen under blackness, weapon-malevolent,

crossed jagged marks mirrored against its steel.

from Night Flight : New YorkTheory of Flight (1935)

Muriel Rukeyser


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 20 Number 9 October, 1999Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher

Thomas Perry, Assistantc o n t e n t s

Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $25 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (includes pos

Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelope. Waterways,

Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127

1999, Ten Penny Players Inc.

Will Inman 4-5

Joy Hewitt Mann 6-7

Phyllis Braun 8

Lyn Lifshin 9-10

James Penha 11-12Herman Slotkin 13

Geoff Stevens 14

David Michael Nixon 15-16

Joan Payne Kincaid 17

John Grey 18-19

Gerald Zipper 20Albert Huffstickler 21-24


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nightriver - will inman

to fly in above Manhattan...East River estuary

and Hudson flowing down upstate...The Lady

in the Harbor renewing our birth-promises...her

rivers run black with earth-blood.

lights

mark the island between rivers. i feel my own

chest in the breast of the plane leaning down

like a returning lover naked with space

and speedready to warm and be warmed in

welcome woke deep out of that darknight twinkling

flow, that ongoing birth-blood.

too high yet

and yet too swift to sense a million footsteps on

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pavement, to hear those strokes of footsoles

on sidewalks or underground

pacing for the trains.

how sudden that river leaps up whole into my body

that flow foetid and fat with death and dung

but still rhythmed with tidepull and still living truer

than sewers and brackish with darker ocean.

one last

turn around the tall Lady, o her shadow is a thirst,

a longing! while the plane sheers in, her wide wings

open with welcome, im

back on ground, now i

feel the dark beat of river down earth under me

13 October, 1998

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The Stone Boat - Joy Hewitt Mann

If I could lie in bed

like a stone boat on the bottom of the riverall concave and filled

with running water, so

there were no lines, no

demarcations between what was in

and what was surrounding me . . .

if my hands could fly up and fingers

ripple in the water like reeds

and tiny silver fish bloom

from their tips . . .

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8/26

I would feel the current

move me, but I could notbe moved.

I would

rest there

and you could never

touch me.

You could only float

or drown.

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9/26

Dirge - Phyllis Braun

Autumn is in Novembers no-mans land:

a season of gray skies, dry fields, and windthat sends leaves scudding like frightened mice,

shakes the bony limbs of naked trees,

rattles the door, shrieking and moaning at night.

This is devastation time, when age

has trashed our thoughts, our dreams of summer days.

An alien force behind the antic wind

we did not recognize in other years

is driving us into silent futile rage.

We cannot think or run, but only stare,

seeing at last the end that was always there.

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10/26

Mt McKinley and Wonder Lakes

Mt. McKinley National Park

Alaska 1947

Lyn Lifshin

light on the dark

snow. Nights

learning where the

stars were when

the caribou migrated

mirror lakes, the water

freezing for the long

winter. All life

connected to the breaking

and icing of water.

Their houses changedwith the stars

food they couldnt

carry, seal meat

and blubber, buried

in the cold

forgotten for years

until spirits in the

stars revealed the

meat to wandering heros

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11/26

Reading about the Floods

in North Dakota

Lyn Lifshin

I think how I

felt swamped,

as if Id lost

everything. What

mattered seemed

buried under water.

I was as wild as

someone looking

out at the water,

the buildings onfire no one could

get to, eerie as

Dresden in WW2.

Like those buildings,

something inside

smoldered, felt as

gutted and I think

now I was lucky

to get out

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12/26

Gravity of Things - James Penha

The moon inhales

tonight -- inspiration in reverse:it sucks the soul

from the shore and the field,

from the grass, the cypress.

This phase, no low

high tide,

aged Vincent

in his own time,

yielded Renfield

undead

forever.

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13/26

Hold that villa

steady;

triangulate all hands!

Tonight the rivers

flow upstream, tonight

the buds reope, tonight

the seeds yield fruit.

Hold the villa

steady. You are the keystone,

and I need to think:

It doesnt touch me,

this swirling eddy,

millennial adjustment.

Somehow you keep me

on the road

to the villa

still

after the storm

I remain

alone.

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Terezin - 1994 - Herman Slotkin

Arbeit Macht Frei- mordant greeting

to tourists sweating summer heat

radiant from fortress walls.Cells - nauseous with cellar damp,

houses - blocks of vacant slum,

the crematorium - a grand vault.

Summer sunlight through open windows

makes the oven a black barrel shadowagainst hospital-white tile walls,

highlighting a stainless gurney,

at its head a wood-block head-rest

creating the perfect anglefor extraction of cadaver teeth.

The air freezes ice- solid -

a freeze-frame that plagues my time.

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15/26

Swirling with hidden grimaces - Geoff Stevens

Swirling with hidden grimaces,

face blackened, knife in hand,

this is one angry commando.

Nothing will stop it tonight.

There will be no warning

as it creeps up in the darkness

and suddenly overpowers.

In the morning, all will be calm

and the land under ten feet of water.

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16/26

Mimes Song - David Michael Nixon

In the halls, the ferns sway slowly.

The parquet stone floors make no clatter.

Nothing can fathom whats the matter.

The old acquaintances grow bloody.

Donald tolls the fire gong,

tolling, tolling all night long

the gong, the gong of fire.

Southern plants are tall and spiky.

The earth turns over a lukewarm shoulder.

Armadillos roll themselves up tightly

and the sands shake till the whole beach shudders.

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17/26

Instantly, the melting swallows

bell, book and gallows,

till all are one melt river,

roiling forever.

The only song

is mimes song.

first published in Hunting the World, Foothills Publish

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If the Creek Dont Over-Flow - Joan Payne Kincaid

The journey winds down

from mouth to finish

tributaries jutting thru cities

and countries traveling toward climax;

usual bright dreams of birth

slowly maturing in planetary turns

swelling blue liquid imaginary contexts;

coursing thru valleys of leaping fulfillment

giving of itself to those in need

only to be dammed, captured,

losing perspective, polluted or eliminated...

fate of wild things...

observing their own demise.

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19/26

From the Fork in the Roads

John Grey

This is where the roads fork.

One road continues along the

low plains, the other diverges

up into the highlands.

The low plain road seems to cut

the grass-lands like a scythe.

The other though disappears

almost immediately in a forest

of sun-glazed pines.

Most follow that lower road,

predictable as its track may be.

It is not unromantic,

the scenery still stacks upon either side

vivid and spring-leaved,

passionately lit like Monet paintings.

But even as the eyes wander,

the body of the direction

rattles on ahead.

Even as it draws near the ocean,

its the cliff that seems to diverge

just a little to allow that path

to keep its straight and narrow.

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A few take to the upper trail however,

noting how the first thing it does

is change its shape

to adjust to the contours, the vegetation,

and, when that becomes so complex,so convoluted that it is no longer possible,

the second thing it does is cease to be.

On the low road, people get to where

theyre going.

On the high road, just being on the road itself

is the end point.

I could easily turn these roads

into something about us.

More than that, I could make one me

and one you.

And yet, here we are together,

although theres a brusque, relentless

aloneness tugging at us even as we love.

It is always inciting us

to deal with the roads.It doesnt understand how warm the kisses

how comfortable the fork feels.

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21/26

G. Washingtons Bridge - Gerald Zipper

Night string of diamonds

stretching across the hole in the air

Jersey Palisade to New York caissonabove the cabalistic river of inky blackness

Today Im going to die he said

drove his car to the middle of it

parked on it

walked to the side of it

climbed the rail to the edge of it

supplicant of the skyhe plummeted

rag doll tumbling

the bitter end of choice

leaving behind ones who must bear the pain of loss

and we cant fly.

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22/26

A Day at the Airport

Albert Huffstickler

This woman comes up andsays, I want to go to

Atlanta, and I say, That

will be seventy-eight

dollars one way, and

she says, I dont

have it but I can take

you to the moon, and

I say, If you can go

to the moon, why would

you want to go to

Atlanta? and she says,

I got to. My dogs

sick. Ill do anything,anything! And she

starts tearing off

her clothes and Im

just sitting there

watching her get nakedand then she climbs

over the counter, the

guy behind her gets

a real view, I mean a

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real view, and shes

sitting there on my

lap when the security

finally gets there andhauls her off, one of

them has her and the

other guys got her

clothes and shes still

yelling, I got to getto Atlanta! and the

crowds gathering and

all of them are muttering,

like, Why dont they

just let her go to

Atlanta and calling

them fascists and all

and shes still yellingwhen they hauled her

out the door. I never

saw her again. Well,

that was just Monday.

Would you like to hearabout Friday?

from Short F

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The Cure - Albert Huffstickler

We think we get over things.

We dont get over things.Or say, we get over the measles

but not a broken heart.

We need to make that distinction.

The things that become part of our experience

never become less a part of our experience.How can I say it?

The way to get over a life is to die.

Short of that, you move with it,

let the pain be pain,

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not in the hope that it will vanish

but in the faith that it will fit in,

find its place in the shape of things

and be then not any less pain but true to form.Because anything natural has an inherent shape

and will flow towards it.

And a life is as natural as a leaf.

Thats what were looking for:

not the end of a thing but the shape of it.Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life

without obliterating (getting over) a single

instant of it.

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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

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 20 no 9

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