Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 21 no 2

8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 21 no 2

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Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream


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Waterways: Poetry in the MainstreamFebruary 2000

Why subject her to propriety blind propriety if she be capable of acting from a nobler spring,if she be an heir of immortality?

from T HE RIGHTS OF WOMAN (17Mary Wollstonecraft


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WATERWAYS : Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 21 Number 2 February, 2000Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara FisherThomas Perry, Assistant

c o n t e n t s

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

2000, Ten Penny Players Inc.

Will Inman 4-6Robert Cooperman 7-8Matt Dennison 9Lyn Lifshin 10-11Joy Hewitt Mann 12Gertrude Morris 13M.M.Nichols 14-15

Kit Knight 16-17Joan Payne Kincaid 18-19David Michael Nixon 20Monica M. Kamps 21Joanne Seltzer 22Albert Huffstickler 23-24


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Mary Wollstonecraft1759-1797


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paradoxes to dance by - will inman

no such thing as distancewhats out there is rooted in here nowwhats here now branches onto out therewe divide ourselves against ourselveswe reduce ourselves to lessernesswe think to control our vulnerablewe remind ourselves to forget thatwhat happens out there, starts herewhat flies out there, wears our wings

we do not gain becoming god we were never notgod does not lose waking center each of uswhat we thought was god was a distanceauthority over, divides us against our whole selvessubmission stretches us into nothingreal communion takes all of us all the way to hereanyone left behind stops us all

what we thought was self crosses another wwe change as we cross through

we are who we were to begin withwe cannot have been who we werewithout changing to who we aregravity is the present that fulfills the pastpresent has no beginning and no end

sing a song of rainbows that root in storm

swimming grabs onto water by letting it go25 September

from Minotaur #34

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her rhythms reached roots down further - will inman

she strode barefoot down a street burning with busy.those who could see into her eyes knew at oncewho she was, though she was the first of her kind.

shewould have wanted to come naked, but the world she stillstrove in would go naked not to be open but to betempting. sometimes nature seems to care for resultswith small concern for means.

she wore spiked greenleaves with poisonous red berries, though she herself

was a healer. she contended with men, though sheabhorred contention.. she tried to offer alternativesto competing, but the men believed her red berriesand pricking leaves..

in the midst of us, she grew Other.her children were taught breast bone competing, but they

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also learned how to share. they recognized a new worldshaping among them and a new age tuning their pulses.her new age

did not suffer fads or fools. her rhythms

reached down deeper than todays yesterday, down intobeginnings that kept primedto start over.

now whenher children mulled their mother, they saw a fatherin the set of her jaws and in the sounds of hertongue. she mothered more than her own, mothered evenher fathering.

in a father time, she shed sharp leavesand red berries, her lips gave thrush calls to the glowof her eyes, her eyebrows sheltered a brimming joy.her children saw in her how they were kin with allcreatures and with all green tribes. behind their eyes,a new tribe keeps tents open.

3 July 1999, Tucson. Minotau

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The Highwayman - Robert Cooperman

It was the first poemthey drummed into our skulls,

a primer of metaphors,the story romantic and doomedso we loved it:Bess shooting herself to warnher highwayman of ambushing troops.

Her crimson love-knotand the black silk of her hair

she combed and combedawaiting his stroking touchgalloped through our pre-pubescent hearts;but even a faster ride was the musketthe soldiers shoved under her breastswe saw heaving as she workedher hands free to squeeze the trigger

and shatter the luscious fruitthat was just starting to drive us wild.

At the end of one lunch recess,I beheld Theresa Caruso,her black hair a flung manein the wet November wind,her crucifix danglingbetween an undreamt-of paradise.

Whatcha staring at, four-eyes?her Brooklyn whine dangerous

as a flicked-open switchblade. Bess the landlords daughter,the landlords dark-eyed daughter I chanted. She blushed crimsonas Besss love-knot, and demanded,Tell me the rest after school,or Tonyll mop up dah floor witcha.

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All His Wanderings - Robert Cooperman

If you want to ogle this,my wife holds a catalogue

a Book of the Month Clubfor womens intimate apparelhelp me edit this chapter.She means the textbookshes been wrestling witha female Jacob pinnedby a two-ton angelfor the past year.

Beth holds the catalogueslick as its spreads of modelsin silk negligees,lace panties, and braswith those cut-out patternsthat drive men crazy

just out of my reach.

From time to timeshe brushes my crown baldas a libidinous monks with her lips,as my red pencil flieswith lubricious speed.

Later, its not the pagesslithery as satin sheetswith coldly perfect women

that titillate me,but Beth, rising wet, glowing, and sudsywith love, from her bath,enchanting as Penelope,when Odysseus wanderingswere finally at an end.

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the news - matt dennison

Reminds me of myflamboyant drunkin New Orleansonce I promisedmarriage (barefootblack-hairedcartoon wolfwith one suspendersnapping througha red and black landscapeof crazy tiltedbuildings, rubbersky bouncing strident

sirens and balloon-tiredbuses back to cataractstreets as I gatheredthe world in gulps,swallowed badnails by the handful,blue bricks by the wall,upended the Mississippi,chewedthe moon tryingto seduce fuel fromthe snake-haired Egyptian,the slim-footed Chinese

astonished to refusal bywhat big eyes, whatbig teeth I hadbefore burning offmy scrap mentalto reveal the steadyflaming structurewithin). Yes,I believe youare carryingour child,my wife.

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Moonrise, Hernanez, New Mexico 1941 - Lyn Lifshin

Ansel Adams

past adobe, deep behind tumbleweedsomeone shuts off a radio, as if newsof war would come over the sage, slither thrudust and locusts. Under a pale mooncrosses gleam, in streaked light

a young girl unbuttons a hand-me-downblouse, lets it fall to the linoleum,thinks of her brother crawling on his bellyin the South Pacific. Her breasts swell, herhair smells of pinyon and agave.

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She hears her father playing banjo on the front porch,thinks of her mothers leathery skin, lank hair,

swears it wont always be like this: nights withnothing but the wind in the mesquite,vows to escape, make it to a place where there is morethan sky and mountains, where women dress in high heelsand smell of roses like in movie magazines

maybe get all the way toAlbuquerque

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Ladies with Silk Handkerchiefs - Joy Hewitt Mann

Im always so niceand I hear people say, Oh,

shes such a nice person.And sometimes it comes with no effort,but mostly its my mothers voice saying,Ladies are nice . . .be nice . . .when all I want to do is say,Leave me alone.

Oh, cant you see Ive got a life, cant you see I need to do something for myself for a change.And I want to say, F off,and I want to speak the other three lettersand not addplease .

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Spider in the House - Gertrude Morris

She crouches in the corner,blackly plump, crooked as a swastika.

(How did she get in?)

Did she case the Spider Lilyfor a place to spin her gossamer?She starts to run. I capture her.

Then I open a window and drop hereight stories down in the rain.Since she is small and light

I hope she lands on all four pairsof legs. I hope she spinsa fast web out of the

spinnerets in her abdomen,a tiny parachute of silk

tofloat

herdown

easybump.

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She Wants the Wings of a Dove - M. M. Nichols

but leaving the windowsill falls ninestories to the mornings mud

the mud so deep she drops throughto the cellar of the world

the world keeps going up onlya string to steer it between

stars and burned-out azaleasit was a gardener thought

theyd want a garden there tooand brought along tools and

boohoo the wrong chemicalsbut undismayed he made then

a rock garden and the cellar ofthe world caught up with it

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taxis soon arrived the driversopened doors and stepped out with

radios growing from their toes whichplayed and played listening

meanwhile the moon rolled pastthey metered it oh what they

learned and learned they werentthe ones who called it the end

of the cellar of the worldNo they said you know

its only the top blows offand the string were on stays

for the next act you wont fall asneakers foot before the curtain

rings down and Relax! its inter-mission while they haul props

from the cellar, wake new stagehandsout of cold storage, hire them

to set the scene their ownway, no book of rules, see

well, this is only whatthe taxi drivers told her

and she believed them becausetheyd been everywhere

now when she says she stillwants to fly they say

What do you think youre doingright now you and us and the

whole crowd, cellar to roof garden?she puts that on hold

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Connies Sisters - Kit Knight

The day after Connie diedher bewildered brother,looking as if the sun died,stopped here and gave mea tomato plantmy own nursery hadntbeen able to find. Connieraised her brother and I

was amazedBob could even think ofa puny detaillike a plant given the chaosof a death. ParticularlyConnie. She had a heart attack

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sitting on the edgeof her bed, putting onshoes. She diedwith one off. Bob maileda newspaper clipping to Conniethe morning she died. AsBob dropped the blue envelope just the shade of her eyes into the box, his older sisterwas dying in a room

100 miles away. I offeredto pay Bob for the plantas he left my house to makefuneral arrangements. Buthe said, Its a giftfrom my sister. I thought of

the strawberry jamConnie asked her brotherto give me and I neverthanked herfor that gift, either. It wasthe first time I ever nameda tomato and my Conniesettled in wellwith the others. The burialwas a month ago and Bob

looking brighter breezed into the yard.Tending tomatoes, I said,Look at at Connies sisters arent they beautiful?

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Regression - Joan Payne Kincaid

Lets digress . . . go back to simpler times nest ce pas!to look at sunlight and shadebefore everything was copy written by Monsanto andits ill ilk . . . how are my children to live in such a bland worldwhere everyone and everything is catalogued and managed.Oh Orwell, Huxley etc predicted as much . . . but the babies . . .taken away from who or what ever bears them . . . to be cocoonedin a nursery and programmed as part of the collectivethe tv of Borg suddenly sprung from the setah soma, litheum, meprobamate, what was that old one?Yes I remember it well she said it was valium . . .early sort of religion carried over to overlap millennia;once upon a time dependency when life was rough

yet nightmares were something from which one could awake . . .

let us lie down on a grass mat in someones family hutcozy as an opera stage with its little lives repeatedly in tactand weep for elephants and lions, gorillas and tigers

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who once ran wild and wonderful before the comingof humanitys filthy sprawl and obscene greed!

Bring in the local person in charge of herbs and spellsand make life bearable again. Oh betterto be a missing link and not to be part of a computer programof modern medicines miracles bringing news of a friends passingdue to the doctors insistence that she have arthroscropic surgeryat the age of eighty five just after a mastectomy!(Emily I shall miss you so sweet at the deli all these years)

The ice cream truck is coming and plays Fur Elisethe first real piece you remember learning when you were twelve

wafting on the gentle humid late spring afternoon.To dream perchance to float detached from allall but the dream center . . .heart of tricks & tales dimly recalledgoing all the way back to beginningsassembled as puzzles never quite fitting.

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Molly - David Michael Nixon

When the rain falls, I remember Mollyand nights inside her room, when water lashed

her window. But that was before she leftSeattle and disappeared into thesunlight. The years have brought only a fewothers, and now I spend the nights alonein a room like hers, but barer, colder.Still, the rain falls often in Seattle,and Molly floats beside me as it falls.

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The Cage Door Is Open - Monica M. Kamps

Sparrows come each morninglike an alarm

to twitter and playagainst my air conditioning box. They greet me,

then tell me I can stop here,but I cannot stay.

In crisp, open air, tiny claws clutch and scrapeon the outer bars of my sleeping brain,

to remind me that the cage dooris open, that I can return

to the lush land, the thick piney woods,the canoeable North.

Free, they flutter outdoors, brushthe echo of evergreen in my mind,

and fly away.

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Immortality - Joanne Seltzer

The rosesof Jackson Gardensall are dead

but the ideaof rosehoodlingers on.

Gertrude Steinknows what a rose is.

Walking with you

in loves fieldI felt the kiss

of the thornsof the expulsionfrom Eden.

first appeared in Night22


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After the Fall - Albert Huffstickler

Youd see the same guysin the same coffee houses

with the hair and the beardsand the raggedy Levistalking in the samehigh intensity voiceswith their laser beam eyes flashing.Only now they weretalking to each other.The crowd was gone.The Sixties were over.And there they satwith the same rap goinglike an echo down the years.It was like a playthat ended in tableau.

The lights came down onstageand came up behind them,

silhouetting them as they yakked on, arms waving, yakked on and onwhile ever so slowly,like a dream of motion,the curtain fell.

from Panopticon, Issue 5, 1997, Portla

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Domestic Bliss - Albert Huffstickler

Id always heard thatGrandpa was a rounder in

his early days but bythe time I came intothe picture, Grandma wasmoving him through lifelike a pawn on a chessboard. Once she toldmy mother, who washaving trouble withmy father at the time,Dont worry, Pearl.One of these days, hellbe eating out of yourhand. But Grandma,my mother protested, I

dont want him eatingout of my hand.

Grandma stared at heropen-mouthed for amoment and then afterthat she always treatedher with a certaindeference, the deference

you reserve for thosewho are physicallyhandicapped or feebleminded.

from ArtWord Quarterly, Fall, 1997 NWhite Bear L

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ISSN 0197-4777published 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 21 no 2

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