Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 3

8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 3

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2001

Mar

Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream


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Waterways: Poetry in the MainstreamMarch 2001

The spring blew trumpets of color;Her green sang in my brain . . .

Harry Kemp "Blind"


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 22 Number 3 March, 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 (incpostage). Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelWaterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-21272001, Ten Penny Players Inc.

http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

Joy Hewitt Mann 4-5

Will Inman 6-11

Geoff Stevens 12

David Michael Nixon 13

Sylvia Manning 14-15

Joanne Seltzer 16

Bill Roberts 17-18

R. Yurman 19

Joan Payne Kincaid 20-22

Ida Fasel 23-24

Jean Wiggins 25-26

Paul Grant 27-28

Pearl Mary Wilshaw 2

Fredrick Zydek 3

John Grey 3

Albert Huffstickler

cover photo by B. Fisherfrontispiece adaptation Bloemaert study by R. S


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RESTORING THE MILL - Joy Hewitt Mann

The frogs have come to an understanding with the sand bags;they spit out their gallumphing and listen

as it echoes back from the wall the workers have piled up whiletrying to clear the mill's foundation of water.The frogs do not understand why these men would destroy their habitatfor the sake of a few old stones:they have seen these stones up closeand can attest to their ugliness.

The young frogs trapped on the other sidescree back in meandering vocalsof the mud:how it is browner and deeperhow they will bury themselves here for the winterhow wise the humans were to do this thing for them.

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The bullfrogs continue to disagree with deep,thundering voices that shake the surface of the water.Like Joshua they will trumpet the wall down;

like Joshuathey will bury the young.

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seasons when - will inman

seasons when every pore is an eye with bode and copewhen spring waits in your skin and wakes in your marrowwhen blood goes fulminate with iriseswhen air touches your nose with violin fingerswhen you go naked under your winter clotheswhen you know with your entire being, open

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skyfingers, earthfingers - will inmanBeethoven Hammerklavier Sonata

skyfingers stroke designs inside veins,

arteries, meeting, crossing, reversing.earthfingersstroke body, limbs naked

rhythmic to touch, torso lifts and rounds,body turns to stroking.

veins become slowrivers, trees lean over water stretches, rainfalls fingerstrokes on surfaces.

flesh goesprairie deep and wide, beach dunes lift fallowwith turtles hatching, tiny feet stroking.

springwaterswake arterial skyfingers with high rock knowingsbend and bring sky wisdoms into limbsand loins.

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earthfingers reach from marshesinto riverbanks, meeting skyfingers.

how hightouches and deep strokings cross like opposite

waves, keeping directions, sweeping inward,outward, slow, dark

beat, god-seductive. lipsjoin fingers, tongue brushes a slow drum, sweepsin corners of steep lick and listen.

touchinggrows an eye in each fingertip, seeing in rhythmic

press and scull. skyfingers see open entirefrom inside, out.

earthfingers see entire from outside,in.

feeling touch-sight brings valley scan:feeling sight-touch brings summit reach.

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sky and earth sing osannas down people.be cradled in cradling hands singing fingers,taste the bright surge.

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with real your center leaping calm - will inman

new reals do not come just from the tips of sources.origins awaken in centers and stretch, move

whole universe creates self new in every forming:essence precedes, resonance emerges, they are divisibleonly by time, and time

makes them oneprocess

level by level unfolding

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i take youin my arms, rainbows

sing around us, turtles

hatch under our feet with darkdreams, we

walk intrinsic ocean, we treadfire

embers stalk us in our ribs what beatingingot drinks and hisses

tides of sea

and stars, i take you in my arms youbring dance down my stirring dust you sing mesource with real your centerleaping calm with reach

first published in Erete's Bloom, No. 1, Sprin

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Spring is - Geoff Stevens

Spring is the fresh-cut cucumber-smell of moistness,the salad greenery of grass and trees,

the band in the bandstand oompahing frog croaks,drumming up lawn worms,trumpeting the rise of umbrellasand taking them down after showers.Spring is a brass band glistening in the sunshine.

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Black Sails - David Michael Nixon

The grass curves over the earth in asweep of green blades, making a sharp,

soft carpet, which the feet may walkshod or bare. I shall protect myfeet with high-top canvas sneakers,black sails on rubber boats,riding the green waves

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Of Spinach from Kitchen Window - Sylvia Manning

This morning you can see the long row of spinach from kitchenwindow.

Almost every seed came through to seedling heightvisible to you by eastern light as deep green linefrom many yards away.

This, the, a proud day for whoever made that soil from wasteand hay,

bought a Lone Star pack of seed (still the cheapest here)from struggling feed store, down the way,

studied the moon guide in almanac(complex as a thoroughbred schedule at the racetrack),built the bed with spade and rake,

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knowing to do all this from grand precedent, upstateand in places even farther, where the daywould have to be in spring.

But here it's autumn.

Here you stand at kitchen window in first morning, firstcoolness,

in a land which bakes as desert for apparent eternity,then breaks, then takes cheap miracle of Lone Star seedand gives you back a vision: the long green line,

the summer gone.

It may not come again.

First published in 'Borderlands: Texas Review of Poetry

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Spring Fever - Joanne Seltzer

We can open the windows,breathe as one again

and welcome new beginnings.

Spring belongs to the youngbut I too can sniffpink and white phloxlilacsand other fragrancesthat make noses run.

I'm writing this for you,my youngest daughter,

hoping in your lifeonly the nose runsnot the eyesand only from flowers.

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Coloring a Boy's Life - Bill Roberts

It was a game they played that summer,the little boy and the lady behind the counter

at the ice cream store, she little tallerthan him but wiser, interested in his education:What color would you like tonight, little man?she asked, eager to see how he'd answer.Blue! he shouted with glee,and obediently she scooped up and deliveredhis mint-flavored ice cream,lumped lovingly into a sugar cone.

Next Friday evening and the ones after,when his mother had given him another nickel,he ran off to High's Ice Cream Storeand requested Pink! or Brown! or White!or Yellow! or Green! or Red!and received a generous helping of strawberry,

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chocolate, vanilla, lemon, pistachio,or raspberry ice cream from the cheerful lady.One Friday night she venturedI also have white and brown together,

or yellow and green, if you like.This confused the little boy,unable to fathom complex equations,his mind not yet exposed to intangibles,so he turned and left without a cone that evening.He was young, a stranger to addition,so wasn't ready for the well-meaning lady'sbrash adventuresomeness.But he returned to the store the following week,the last one before school started,with two nickels this time,and ordered a scoop of white and one of brown.Thus, he launched himself into simple mathematics,plus the colorful and tasty combinations in life.

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For Morris While Dancing - R. Yurman(a ghazal)

Smooth as glass or ice, eyes a desperate blue, you stare,

my breath slows a pulse, we waltz, my heart seeks air.

Multi-colored lights swim and skirl above the polished floor.Each step dips and swirls. Keeping time, you swing your long red hair.

"She fed him and bathed him and put him to bed" then danced alone, embracing a wooden chair.

Arms light as bird wings, soft as feathers, youmove me across the floor. Our feet touch air.

Cinderella nights, ballgowns and tuxedoed lovers.dazzling greens and blues reflected in your rich red hair.

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Karma.Com II - Joan Payne Kincaid

Do you remember the timesI had to sit waiting and waiting

for nothingto dissolve into somethinglike a lovely bird in the woods

or on shore, a lovely party someplace;

the strange miasmatic vapidocean of waiting audience

convention of expectant breed

in high-fashion apparelpacking fast and future moves

smiling in their cell phones

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Saxophone Songs V - Joan Payne Kincaid

All fairytales, myths,religious imaginings

she hadbecome her own mother

in the kitchenflying like die valkerie______________

German extremes of heaven hell mouthed~loudly

gazing at a t-bone steakin blues clubs where talking axes

act-out how it is on reeds

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Suddenly - Joan Payne Kincaid

You ask to have a CD played thinking to hear orderbut it starts at the end or somewhere illogical

there is no key into the secret garden where bulbsare planted upside downtravailing with Cro-Magnon in the blue vanwhich rumbles stream of consciousness trophiesphilosophies of Christmas dcor lonely monologuesin green rays and orange cloud glitzy stations-of-the-cross.

Up the tree to add to the neighborhood glitz(there was a woman who lived in a giant tree, etc);a play happens in entre'actallat once . . . the little pickle of life in three actsnow it is celebrations of return of light to the universe

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Piano Lessons - Ida Fasel

There was talk she had won an internationalfirst prize, had played with symphony orchestras

in the great capitals of the world. She satbeside me year after year and never touchedthe keys except to let her right handwith a few notes make a passage clear.

In some ways I fancied I could play betterthan she. I read easily at first sight

and that advanced me without much practice.My last lesson before we moved to Boston,my fingers ran the keys like a cartin a downhill spill. She sat, as usual,intensely listening, left hand in her lap.

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My fourth or fifth try, suddenlyher left hand, mute so long, leaped acrossmy shoulder and linked with the right

in a series of notesswiftly, gracefully, surely,like a waterfall cascadingfrom pool to pooldown a terraced hillside.

I never heard her play again,

nor heard myself play as well.

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Borderline Personality - Jean Wiggins

In this lush neighborhood I walk past lawnsmanicured, edged like a lady dressed in chiffon

waiting for a gentleman to call;yet weeds, harmony not their object,grow to be sprayed with weed killeror be pulled up, only to creep back in,

defying edges like Bonnie in Athens, Georgia, years ago,a carnival worker whose husband died

while the carnival was in town.She stayed, renting a trailer in the shabby side of town.She showed up at churches, her small dog trottingby her side, asking for help, attended church suppersand church on Sundays, dressed in eccentric attire.

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Sitting for hours in the public library reading,she engaged people in philosophical discussions.She was accepted as weeds are accepted

because they are there.They demand presence.Faithful to nature's wild, profuse, irrational ecstasy,she died still unedged.

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A Little Slow Blues - Paul Grant(for Bill Mathews)

Bill, if you disimpaled my memory of youfrom a honey locust thorn on the ground

in the curve at the bottom of the rocky, rutted trackthat serves me as a driveway, and if then you driftedup it watching the hunter twilight leave its homein the cracked windshield of the '69 Coup de Villeburied in the oak and elm and walnut shadowsof the scrub woods guarding my front doorfrom the spendthrift road and the overlook,

you'd find some blues, if you wanted them,marinated and then left to agein idyllic near-oxymorons like broken heartand minor key and good left hand.As Fats used to say, One never knows, do one?A bass is walking the moon

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up South Mountain and introducing herto the skyline; if they hit it off(& they always do, you know, they always do . . .),they'll leave the party together

and just before sunrise, we'll be given the bestview we ever had of their stardust lees.

Meanwhile, there's a fairly good Cabernetin the back of the cabinetunder the picture of the woman whose house this wasand whose ashes are displayed in the old dispenserthere in the living room above the legend

A Festive Flavor Fortified By Freshness.There's scotch too brandy, gin, all kindsof hootch she left behind. No, none for me.I don't mean to be smug we bothknow how worthless that is but we're travelingin the same near-oxymoron: sober now.

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Beating Time - Pearl Mary Wilshaw

Whenever I open a closetdoor, a musty canvas case

tumbles out on the floor,unreeling a lifetime offeelings stop-framed onmemories dealing with mynemesis . . . drums.

As a toddler, I found by lurking

around the serene mountain scenepainted on the head of Dad'sbass drum, a touch of thepedal produced a dull thud,while strikes ad infinitummade mighty thunder rumble.

Excitement ceased whencleaning became a bore,keeping black-trimmed traps

free from dirt, an endless chore,what with wood block, maracas,brushes and such attractingtoo much dust then along came

Drums to the wall, Dad answeredcalls to play at wedding feasts

and balls. I played piano witha quartet of teen-aged siblingswho traveled by public bus.So, I had to tote cymbals andsnare drum, to and from.

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At college, I spent a summerplaying paradiddles, becominga drummer. Too bad my firstschool band had a rhythm-dumb

beat keeper, creeping to anaberrant meter, who thoughtskipped measures ought to meansyncopation, then upped andquit amid mega frustration.

I also recall one spring day

when the firemen's band, due toplay in a Memorial Parade, wasshy a bass drummer 'til someoneremembered me. Washed andstarched, in whites I marched,beating a spirit stirring bass

drum up to the cemetery, whereon cue the group slow-marched,ceased playing . . . except forthe battery that tapped rims

of instruments with sticks,while I plowed forward poundingheads in turn, until I noticedand stopped dead . . . ears aburn.

One autumn day, a handsome scienteacher glanced my way. By the

time I played piano at his assemblwhile his class did the "Bunny Hopthat he punctuated with rim shotsCupid had pierced my heartwith a drum stick dart.

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By then, I found that thishandsome sailor had rolled hissnare through ranks of the Naval

Militia up to the drummer's throneof the "Blue Harmonies", Catskillbound, ad-libbing big band charts.Post war he taught and plied hispercussionist's art for support.

He married me for piano lessons,

free of course, not all that bad,since notes graced our lives aswe shared jazz and classical vibes.

Besides . . .how many wives in this worldcan boast about getting a gray,

mother-of-pearl bass drum forsome birthday, or claim theyunwrapped a Zildjian Cymbalwhen their anniversary came?

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Near the Bottom of Our Oldest Dreams - Fredrick Zydek

Sometimes they surface in the long momentsjust before sleep. These are dreams that know

the secrets of trees, primordial rhythmswhere the hearts of fishes, worms, and men

know they are kith and kin. These are dreamsthat understand survival or being awed bya blade of grass dreams that recall and ancienttime of beginnings, the security of sleeping

safely in trees, of being a gangly furry thing,stomach full of berries and ants, clinging withall fours to a strong branch on the family tree.And there are older dreams into which we

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sometimes fall. We are water-boundand sometimes live in mud. In these dreams,outer shells, solid as rocks, house dreams

thick as ambrosia. There is one more dream,

older than the rest. In this dream darknessis gathered into something akin to song.Deep within its melody, sparks begin to flyuntil the dream is spun and born to light.

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The Sleeper - John Grey

Corn grows in my sleep.So do dogs mate

and sleet splatter the windows.The earth rolls slowly aroundand grass seed awakens from winter.All of thiswhile my head wears the pillowlike an expression,my snoring is louder than

a low-flying plane,and I dream hawk-men flyingand Tarzan's lost city.

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When nothing's going on in it,my life is at its busiest.People step inside this doing shell

to watch me like stars,to love me.They pluck their days with mefrom my coiled body,like books from shelves,read them over and over,even in the darkness.

I can crawl into bed,twist up like a gnarled tree trunk,and all I protect

is protected,all I watch overis still watched and watched and watcWhat I am, Gale sometimes tells me,doesn't just rest with me.

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Boundaries - Albert Huffstickler

Rothko wanted to go to theheart of the matter. He

wanted to paint the spirit,to paint light then have

you stand close enough tobe in it with him. Forgetobjects, bodies, forgettable clothes, trees andashtrays: he was not content

to point. He wanted to

put it there and have yoube in it no middle man,

no art, no artist. Hescares me. I think hewanted to stand on the otherside, beckoning. And youcan't do that while you'restill in a body. I guesshe found that out.

first published in Pitchfork #3, Austin, T36


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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

Documents

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 3