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8/3/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 11
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2001
Decem
Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream
8/3/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 11
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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream,December 2001
But I shall recall the whispering sage,
The summer herds and the branding crews,
And the chant of the branding names.
Howard McKinley Corning "Chant of the Cattle Brands
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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 22 Number 11 December, 2001Designed, 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 -- $25 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (inpostage). Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed env
Waterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-21272001, Ten Penny Players Inc.
http://www.tenpennyplayers.org
Will Inman 4-5Lyn Lifshin 6-8Terry Thomas 9-10Paula Alida Roy 11-12James Penha 13Kevin P Roddy 14
David Sapp 15-16Robert Cooperman 17-18
Fred Ostrander 19-20Geoff Stevens 21Bill Roberts 22-24John Grey 25Jim Tolan 26Lynn Veach Sadler 27-28
Gertrude Morris 29-30Ida Fasel 31-32
Joanne SeltzerNancy A. HenryArthur Winfield KnighKit Knight 3Sylvia ManningAlbert Huffstickler 4
http://www.tenpennyplayers.org/http://www.tenpennyplayers.org/8/3/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 11
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no. no story here. i improvise will inman
no. no story here. i improviselistening. i'm walking in a strange country
inside me where a lot is known I haveno way through to except by taking downsecrets in my own voice but from a differenttongue.
where that treasure waits, thatout-of-reach friend-place, somewhere in mefinds a resonance of joy. ilook with my listening, a vision, yes,
but no story.and yet. and yet, when
a story comes to me i write it downas if i've always known it by heart, as if it hasalways existed down me, whole,in a single mind-cell or down a porein my left elbow 24 november 2000, tucson
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not how wwwebrand cattle will inman(after lines by Howard McKinley)
not how wwwe brand cattle, how we brand
each other. sage cannot soothe curses.hit this bottle! come brand to brandy!get out of the hot skin, away from burningtongue-whip.
wear a scorpion in yourboot, warm a rattler in your blanket thiswill cure you out of mocking by your kind.wear a mother in your ribs.
see highas high by the scorch of your pain.
24 november 2000, tucson
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Solstice Lyn Lifshin
your call, alight contracting
like verbs that
won't fit togetherin any poem, yourwords rubbed
into my skin,
electricity on thisdark December
Thursday, pull asalmon roseglow. The moon
rides into this roomlike a love letter
you never wrote,
those curves loopmoving overmountains, sky
writing or fireworks
against a darkersky
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In Such a Perfect Calendar Town Lyn Lifshin
almost no one, except our family wasn't Christian. Ifyou went to elementary school you were Baptist,Congregationalist or Episcopalian. Otherwise
you were Catholic. Except for us and my relativeswith the Jew Store where people were proud to, asthey said "Jew them down." I never knew Asian food
didn't come in a can marked chop suey. Italian food was
Chef Boyardi. I didn't see pizza until I went to college.Anyone from Germany was suspect. There were noJapanese, no Arabs, nobody with a darker skincolor than my blonde sister and I after a summer atthe beach. Then Mr. Robinson came to coach boys basket
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ball and football. A few parents decided there was no longertime for their kids to play. He rented a house outside thetown and he and his wife went to the Baptist church a fewSundays. Middlebury High won games for the first time in
years but there weren't as many clapping in the bleachers. Ican't remember if they didn't renew his contract or if he
left in the middle of the season. Only a few people tried toget him to stay. When my mother told me later my father was
one of the 2 or 3 who tried to convince the others what a goodman Mr. Robinson was, such an asset. My father who hardly saida word to my sister or me all the years we moved thru the rooms asif together, became for a moment almost real.
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Took a Walk Terry Thomas
Took a walk up past the pump houselimp and shuffle, actually snuffling in pain
when my right foot caught a rock,scattering curly dock seeds like brown bugs.Go up for the exercise, lupines . . . and Mina.Mourning doves queried from the old apple orchard:where's the crop, where's the green,what do you want?
She sits in the dirt, plain cotton skirtfalling just here, just there, staring intentlyat a pebble, stick, poking pill bugs tillthey roll up, laughing at everything, nothing.Sometimes she knows I'm there, gazes intently,smiles, points at her playthings, inviting.Then I squat awkwardly, obeisance
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to this forest madonna, five year oldin a twenty year old body. Soon sheloses track of me and I scrabble to myfeet again, shuffle homeno answers for the doves.
Used to ride that area on a Tennessee stud,mudding our sides, scaring up smallanimals. One day I hearda thud and saw young Wilhelmina flying away,soft and gray, arms thrown out like wingsthen I was pinned, crushed under that beautiful horse.
A friend put him down. I heard the shotas I was being taken away.But the girl. What about the little girl?We all went down that day.But today she saw me, maybe knew who I was,And still gave me that sweet smile.
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A Letter to Zoe Paula Alida Roy
My world is black and white,copper where beech leaves rustle.
The deer have come early, precisehoofprints engraved in new snow.
The sky is clear grey,no sun since you were here.
The bear sleeps in the lot next dooror in the woods across the way
where she can hear the blue icegather on the Moose River.
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Last night I drove through flurries,huge flakes rushing toward me
like furious angels with messages
I couldn't understand until
I remembered how you asked for a poemWith angels and snow and deer.
Now the hungry doe is back, nibblingthe low bushes, her winter coat
thick and grey and tiny flakesbegin to twirl in windless air.
Miles below in the jagged cityyou are hoisting a purple backpack
and tucking wild hair under your cap,just a bundle of bird bones, cold
fingers and toes, restless language,a face-full smile, a gallant heart.
I draw an imaginary linefrom mountains to jagged city,
a tow rope along which we'll pull
ourselves into each other's dreams.
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Something There Somewhere James Penha
My mother believed in blackberry patchesand salt licks
where clouds of butterfliesand darning needlesproved Aesopian wisdomhanded me down on plastic plates:Don't kill your chickensin the bush
with only one stonein handmy darling.
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My Mother's Dementia Kevin P. Roddy
She twitches her blankets and looks,Sweet and distant, like some wool cat
Languidly ignoring the livesAround her, and her eyes glove-warmWith the morning, avoiding eachOther eye that might keep her from elseEternities she senses. ThisDeath does us a kindness taking
People away in their pieces:Beginning with the need to wake,Knowing where we are, were, what weMight be doing here while waiting.
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Lifesavers David Sapp
Mom's schizophreniawas funny once in a while,
diverting from the usual hysteria,like her famous epistleto the Bishop of Columbus,the man in the cathedralon Broad Street.
She rifled through boxesof Dad's Playboys,rupturing a sacredsequence of months;at the end of a Sunday afternoon,a carpet of flesh laysprawled across the floor.
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I knew wherethe women were keptbut reverently returned the pages,the icons of my adolescence,
to their cardboard tabernaclesand the top shelf of the sacristy,above the suits of my father's closet.
Mom's pageant reached a finalewhen the perfect centerfold was pickedamong several runners-up;cherry, orange and lemonLifesavers were gluedto the prominent, glossy regions,a hilarious sacrilegeto the places of majestyI once gazed upon in awe.
I could almost laugh aloud,a brief reprieve in the yearsof my mother's madness,when I imagined
the bishop's surpriseand wondered if something stirrbeneath those heavy vestments.
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Sweet Anne Marie Robert Cooperman
"Got two reasons why I cry/away each lonely night/First one's named sweet Anne Marie/and she's my
heart's delight/Second one is prison. . ." Robert Hunter, Friend of the Devil
He called himselfa friend of the deviland the man of my dreams,thinking he could robthe Reno bankand not get caught.
I told him I wanted no partof a life running from the law.Now, I get his lettersfrom the territorial prison,
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though I never answer them.That stolen, spent moneyleft a trail bright as snailslime under a full moon.
He swore he'd be outbefore I could count to fifty.Fifty years is more like it,lucky they didn't jerk himlike a puppet on a string.
I've got a good life
with Fred and our kids,wouldn't trade itfor a honey tongued roguewith a fast horseand a sack fat as a melonwith silver dollarshe's dying to spend.
Still, when wind moansthrough the canyons at night,
I recall the time we laytogether, his hands softas thornless roses.
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Speaking to My Sister Fred Ostrander
All that I have left unfinished, among the black windows,the spider at its trickery, the moonlight upon the room's disorder. . .
What is the legend that created us? You. And me.Our Gothic years.The fingers of the spinner working at their threads,the unprotected cradle, misidentification and mistake.And the moon makes its progress past the attic window,intimating this.
The past is immediate and I am secret.It was you who reached the turning, the dark, interrupting trees.You were and in the instant that followed were not.Removed into the rooms of a dream.
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Dear S.,When did the search for the explanation becomean Escher-like repeated staircase?Was it my inability to reach toward you into unexplained directions,the dark sea-painting hanging from the nail?
Figures fall to pieces in the grass like statues,their plaster, astonished faces.Great eyes upon the verge of darkness.
And the transient remembers the eternal room.
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Bully Beef Geoff Stevens
Fray Bentos is a well-known cattle brand,
is a cow in a tin caboose.
It has a key to let it loose.
It does not beef about being canned.
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The Kid from Borneo Bill Roberts
A mean little girl told me onceI was so wild looking, my hair
in such disarray, my clotheslooking like I'd slept in them(I had, for lack of PJs),my shoes needing new solesand surely lots of polish,my face and hands duefor a good scrubbing,so wild looking I could beone of those freaks in a circus.Well, Barnum & Baileycame to town one dayand my Dad took us.
I didn't know they hadwhat was called a side show,with a fat lady, the world's
tallest man, the tattooedcouple, a guy with rubberyjoints, and of course the wildman from Borneo in a cage.Well, we took one lookat each other through those bars,the wild man and the wild kid,and I discovered thatthe mean little girl was right:the wild guy from Borneowas an act all by himself,
just as I've tried to bemost of my unnatural life.
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Out West Bill Roberts
It takes practiceto ride a cactus.
City slickersfeel the stickers.
Real cowgirls and cowboysdon't make the Ow! noise.
They ride 'em hardand never get scarred.
You too can rideif you have a tough hide.
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The first four lines of this poem welished in Cricket, July 2000, Volume Number 11, under the title, 'Wild weBartlett Boswell (aka Bill Roberts)
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Holding Your Breath Bill Roberts
You hold your breath as long as you canand count slowly to yourself,
wondering on which number you'll die,hoping you'll reach one hundredbut you never do, sucking in air
you decide to die another day.Imagining death when you're a childis a simple process of holding your breathuntil you're lightheaded, panicky,Unable to die so voluntarily.Just as well, your religious side says You're not ready yet,God has more in store for you.But what exactly?
Then you take control of matters,engineer your life along prescribed av
education and work,finding a loved one, nurturing that lovtaking on family responsibilitiesand taking fewer risks,watching your diet after watching youdistort, expand and then wrinkle,slow down and hurt for unexplained reforgetting this and thatand that long years ago you tried yourfoolishly, to hold your breath forever
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The Rooster and the Four Carved Hens
John Grey
The rooster cannot understand
their stillness, why they'refrozen one peck from the ground.He looks curiously at yellow wings,orange and green bodies,like no fowl he's ever seen.So dumbfounded,he doesn't touch his seed.
There's four of them,one of him.Does that make a difference?
I will never know a moment like this.The humans and the carved headsare as different
as who I know,who I don't know.I don't wait for strangersto become familiar.I know staring, no matter how longI do it, never becomes understanding.But the bird could be out there yetwaiting for the hens to move.He could have no lovebut love for explanation,no life but still life.
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The Sky Between Jim Tolan
I.
Summer sun, rising through the gates
of a graveyard, a young woman, bare-legged on the grass, watches her toesslide dewy across the name of a manshe hardly knew, the wind in her eyes.
II.
Wind carries the shapes of distant loversamong the clouds. A child they never knew,I lie beneath those lovers and refuseto name them. They offer the sun to meand I undress. A ground squirrel watches,peering out its hole. I lift my kneesand it drops beneath the surface of the day.
III.
Night falls. Beneath the pulsing eyes o
I warm myself in a world turned upside
IV.
Neither fisherman nor fish, the new mrising with the sun, she tends his gravIt is the labor of her day. She mustbe my mother. And though I've been d
nearer the fragrance of our common pI've yet to know her eyes, the sound ovoice trailing
across a history of nameless years.
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If I Were Native American Lynn Veach Sadler
If I were Native American,I'd blend traditions from all tribes
as Indians tobacco blended.I'd blend my tobacco with sumac,dogwood, willow barkand rose bush.I'd let that blend loose as smoketo rise up and up, carrying me with itto the Spirit World,teaching me that there is moreto the world than in the world of men.
My pipe bowl would beof argillite or catlinite.
I'd blend with Hopi men to weave.I'd woo with courting flute, water drum.I'd wear squash-blossom necklaces
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for fertility, explaining they were fromthe pomegranates of Moorsby way of Spanish,by way of Navajos.
I'd carry a Crow man's mirror bag,knowing just how important mirrorsare to well-groomed men.I'd store our child's umbilical cordinside a turtle, that symbol of long life.I'd protect that turtleto protect our childand because I'd love turtles.
We'd have the greatestwooden dining spoonsthat could be found. Our child's birthwould be a feast for using them.
I'd be a combination warrior, chief,and medicine man or a wise andpretty Indian maid who leads her tribI'd courteously embrace the spirit
of every animal,valiant enemy I killed.I would be especially kind to horses.My Spanish-descended martingale wouprevent my saddle's slippingalong my horse's back.
If I were Native American,
I'd dance more than I would talk,paint my stories to remember them.If I were Native American,I'd walk with Nature,not with the world of men.
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Sleeper Awake! Gertrude Morris
They never tell you, do they children,that Prince and Princess do not alwayslive happily ever after. You see,
when Beauty was awakened by Florimond,she gazed at him "with eyes more tenderthan a first sight of him might mean to
excuse: 'Is it you, my Prince? she said.'You have been a long while coming!'At first their union was idyllic.
But having been too long away,she could no more content herselfwith embroidery, or conjuring potions
and perfumes from simple herbs, or fromessence of patchouli caravanedfrom India. Restlessly she paced
the gardens in purple silk peignoir,whose flutter stirred the cockatoosimprinted there to fly like living
birds, so real, she could imagine their
harsh cries behind the purlingof the doves. Her own voice, tremulo
from long disuse, now grew stronger.The prince, dismayed by such copiaverborum, practiced patience and pray
But when she intruded in the businessof his manorial demesne, he calledfor wicked Uglyane to witch the
Princess Beauty's winding sheet.Only a shred of pity saved her:Ugly magicked Beauty full awake.
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The Prince was most displeased,but knowing a hellhag's power,held his peace. Sweet Beauty
held no grudge against Uglyane.
In fact she called her Annie, and theysoon became fast friends. A new name
and the affection of a friend the first she ever had was balmto a tortured spirit. Made nearly
beautiful by love, she'd casther last spell upon the Princehimself. Thus he became a peasant
with no memory of high estate.Further charity provided a horseand plow, and a little land,
chickens and a skein of geese.(He was humbly grateful.) And soonhe provided leeks and greens
for the castle kitchens, and fodder
for the stables. Beauty of course,became mistress of the realm.
Did he deserve his fate, you ask?Only Blind Justice knows.Still, even friends may live happy
ever after. And so children,happily the story ends!
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Longhorns at LBJ Ranch Ida Fasel
The logo stands for wealth of Texas past:Vast herds that foraged the new state together.They roved the widespread land; knew icy blast
And torrid sun; bore up in every weather.They took their strategies of strength from deepWithin their pedigree, first settlers whoEncountered harshest seasons in their sweepOf drought, flood, high winds, fierce snows to come through.
Slab-sided, clumsy critters, winteringOn frozen water, grass where there seemed none,They trudged off range, lean early signs of spring.Now new breeds named like wine glow in the sun.
Where roadside flowers speak of Lady Bird,Her husband's pride is a historic herd.
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Note: The herd is part living history program acomplex of buildings thmake up the Lyndon BaiJohnson National HistoSite in Johnson City, Te
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Prairie Ida Fasel
Imagining the far-awayFrom Amherst, she sought to convey
By a clover and one bee the greatPlains bending, swaying in the playOf wind that never seems to abate
But tirelessly partners the grassIt lifts as in a dance with ease A body stretching miles across,A body vast as wind's range is.
In restless rest, it may be teemingWith count of days and years since rain.I like to think it lies there dreaming
Of a clover and one bee to loseThemselves in space they cannot use.
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The reference is Emily Dickinson'sto make a prairie.
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A Ranch in Brazil Joanne Seltzer
Cattle run unbrandedover thousands of acres
without fencesor cowboysbecause the valleyis protectedby riverand mountains.
Never fed antibioticsthey livethey die
never fed hormonesthey eatthey growalong the Amazon'sfertile banksthat feature ten thousandvarieties of snakeand isolation
so toxicsons who will inheritEdenic landscapeflee to Rio de Janeiro.
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Alumni News Nancy A. Henry
Sweet hungry wolfyou slipped intothat sleek campus lifethrough some rusty door ajarpenniless, always bummingchange for coffee
you were Pippin, Don Quixotethe boy in Equus
how was that fair?
Blasting all theirpreppie nonsense to hellwith that crooked smile,those ragged jeans.
Out by the stableswhere the rich girls' horsesstamped and steamedwe slept on soft pine-strawand your thrift-store coat.
You showed me Cassiopeiahow the cats crept in at dawnto sleep in sawdust cornersin the mouserich smell of sweetfeed.
To find, after twenty-five yearsYou in summer-stock, not dead,or in some city-office tombThis makes me less dissatisfiedwith life in all its sad unwindings.
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Imagining the DeadArthur Winfield Knight
Strange fish with no eyeshover at the bottomof the prehistoric lake.Paiutes believe the spiritsof Indian children murderedmore than a century agorise from the blue depths,where they sleep eternallybeside the cui-ui fish,
their long, flowing hairfloating on the surfaceon moonlit nights.The Paiutes build bonfiresbeside Pyramid Lake, watching.Only the dead flourish here.
I can feel the heat risingas I cross the saltflatsunder a pewter colored sky,imagining Marilyn Monroe,imagining Gable and Monty,imagining Marilyn's abortedbabies, imagining allthe dead. Forty years ago,The Misfits was filmed
on these saltflats.Nothing everything has changed.
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Daisy Anderson, Pearls: 1998 Kit Knight
In 1917 I be 21 and marriedBobby Ball Anderson,a 79 year old veteran ofThe Civil War. Bobby wasa slave on a Kentucky farm;he cursed the whippin'sso run off then he was 22and joined the Union Army.Bobby, he rub onionson his skin to ruin the scent
for the hounds. Afterthe War, Bobby, he goto New Mexico and become aBuffalo Soldier and fightIndians. My family askhow could I marry
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such an old man? Bobby,he own a home on a ranchin Nebraska and Bobby,he be kind. Bobby nevermarried no one before meand he be no more used to handlin'a horse than a woman. Buthis whole clean simple heartlit in his eyeswhen he look at me. I wanteda home and didn't own but onedress. My daddy, he be
a sharecropper and 10 of usbe standin' to eat becausewe didn't have nochairs. Me and Bobbybe married 13 years andthat man, he put pearls
around my neck. More'n60 years ago a big ol' Plymouthkilled my Bobby. I neverremarried and I'm gonna diein this nursin' home. Everytime I touch my pearls,I heard Bobby sayin', "Should beand is are cousins, but don't sharea house." I see him gazin'out the kitchen window,lookin' farther than anyoneI ever knowed.
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Margo Veasey, May 2000 Kit Knight
South Carolina is the onlysouthern state to still flythat Confederate flag overtheir Statehouse. Legislatorsfrom the first stateto fire on Union troopsbought over 1,000Confederate battle flagsthe last two months. Iwork for a company that makes
the rebel banners and I'mblack and I like my job.I work with a black man,John, who talks like he waslayin' down. By his eyesI can tell he's thinkin'
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much faster thanhe's talkin'. John, he likeshis job, too; he even likesthe boss, a puny white man.John, he wears a t-shirtthat says, "You Wear Your 'X'I'll Wear Mine." We knowthe NAACP insists that flagis a symbol of hate, butme and John, we're getting'married. We met,workin' together, over
the stars and bars ofthat flag. After someCivil war battles, the airwas as heavy as oatmeal andpools of blood remainedin depressions on
the rocks. Not much goodnessin war. My little sistermoved up to Boston and saysI oughta be ashamedmakin' them flags, andI told her, Massachusetts wasthe first American colonyto legalize slavery. That flag,,it's doin' nothin'. That flag,it's never done nothin'.There's just a lot ofprejudiced people around.
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Sometimes Sylvia ManningAll composite phenomena are impermanent.
Buddha
Sometimes you have to go awayor otherwise go awry.
Sometimes you have to begin anew,stop asking why you're no goodat being you.
Sometimes you have to let it go,
let go, remember if anythingthe first seal, or noble truth,or whatever it was.
Sometimes, like a child while sufferinabuse, you have to leave
your body, let it beempty, unused.
And then come backto try again for emptiness,or fulfillment, or peace,
or identity, orwhatever it was.
From Hyde Park Poets, PecaDecemb
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North of Sante Fe Albert Huffstickler
North of Sante Fe,the fascination of that gullied landin its serene fragmentation.It's before form.You can't photograph it.There's no place to begin.And of course, the light,so clear that it isn't light at allbut something that occurredbefore light ever became.
So what comes to youis the sense of how things werebefore they ever were.And that's the fascination:
you don't want to leavebecause then you have to begin
and once you begin, well look around you.Some sense of serene unbecominghaunts you like a dream,like a whisper beyond sound.Perhaps that's the original temptationnot to become at all.But of course, not being Indian,I can afford to philosophize:I don't have to tryto pull a living out of this gullied wastAnd of course they (the Indians) look as t
they grew out of the very earth,extensions of the land they walk.There's that fascination too:they are implicit.And they build their homes of earthso that there exists of itself
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this grand analogyhaloed by the lightless lightso clear it aches in your throatand the heart swells to burstingbut of course cannot burstbecause a broken heart can't burst,do that single, total thingwhich implies a wholenesslost long ago the heart broken,ruptured, ground down beneaththe countless feet of city sidewalks.There's a stunned quality
even to our enthusiasmbecause our broken heartsspray out in all directions.It's like standing too closeto someone who spits when he talks.Yes, we paid a price
and north of Santa Fe and almostanywhere in that enchanted land,we glimpse that priceand almost remember for a moment
just how much we lost. . .Fade to fractured planes of pre-dawnAnd light like crumbling clay.
From Rustic Rub, North Yorkshire,
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"The very hairs on thy head are numbered."Albert Huffstickler
It's really very simple, you see,all the politics, government, economy.It's about cipherdom.It's about being willing to make somebodya cipher or let them be made one.All the dictators, moneymen, tyrants,priests, kings, junior directors thatare willing to say that one man is acipher and shouldn't be treated like a
human being they're all on the same side.The men that profit from wars are thekillers, the men that let this happen,they're all on the same side. That'show it is. Any person who is willingto reduce another man or woman
to a cipher is outside the real lawand a murderer. It really is thatsimple and don't let anyone tell
you different because if you dothen he's reduced you to a cipher.And that's what this country was gointo be about once long ago (and may beagain, please God): it was going tobe the one place in the world whereevery living soul counted, the onenation in the world without any cipher
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Dispensation - Albert Huffstickler
Just because somebody diesdoesn't mean you have to get rid of them."I think Ill make her a guardian angeland put her to work," I told Keddy.I was referring to Susie, who died a year ago.Anniversaries are hard.There's something in us that's cyclicalto the very day.Ignore this at your peril.And so, having gone through
grief, anger, frustration, guilt, you name it having gone through it alland still feeling unresolved,I elect to appoint her a guardian angelwith all the privileges, honorsand responsibilities the office entails.
It will probably work: she liked angelsAnd it's a good decision:I can't put her to restso I might as well put her to work.Somewhere out there on the astral plshe nods her approvaland I feel her smile as,humming an off-key hum,she gets busy.
from mojo risin' #2001 Chicago
44
The December 2001 issue is being publis
in March 2002. Albert Huffstickler has d
The day Sylvia Manning called to tell us
death we had received a last envelope of
poetry. 'Dispensation' was in that envelo
8/3/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 11
46/46
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
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