Waterways Vol 20 no 10

8/8/2019 Waterways Vol 20 no 10

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1999

20th

Annivers

ary

Nove

Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream


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Waterways: Poetry in the MainstreamNovember 1999

Pregnant zero breeding annihilation. . . .futility stands clear on these horizonsmarked in the zeros of a thousand cloudspregnant above a harvested land, whose fruit

was peace infected with the germs of war.

from Night Flight : New YoTHEORY OF FLIGHT (1935)Muriel Rukeyser


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 20 Number 10 November, 1999Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher

Thomas Perry, Assistantcontents

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 envelWaterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127

1999, Ten Penny Players Inc.

Lyn Lifshin 4-7

Matt Dennison 8-10

James Penha 11

Joan Payne Kincaid 12-13

R. Yurman 14Arthur Winfield Knight 15-16

Gertrude Morris 17-18

Joanne Seltzer 19

John Grey 20

M M Nichols 21-26

Ida Fasel 27-28

Will Inman 29-30Joy Hewitt Mann 31-34

Albert Huffstickler 35-36


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This Was My House - Lyn Lifshinbased on Washington Post article Sept. 14, 1996

said Elvira Lyontyeva, gesturing at nothing in particular. Heaps of rubble, a few bricks like tom

Lyontyeva can walk up stairs, across miles of the city, she is alert,even smiles now and then. But inmonths, she lived under shell fire and aerial\bombs in a dank, unlit basement, running upstairs when th

sions eased a bit to grab blankets, some food. When the house collapsed she was able to get potatoeing

thru a hole mice gnawed. After the Russians took Grozny she made a life for herself on the third flbuilding across the street. She lost most of her clothing but saved her best rugs which had been wr

plastic. She returned to work at a hospital where she was busy with trauma patients and victims of a pbreak. There was plenty of shooting but life amid the rubble began to seem tolerable. By spring, thmarket

was bustling and full of goods. But by October, peace talks unraveled and on Dec 4 a huge car bombed killing several of her neighbors, Lyontyeva thought of leaving. She had two sisters and a son in

But nurses were desperately needed. More peace talks broke down. On Aug 5, guerrillas had launch

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scale attack and she was stuck at the hospital, working round the clock. It was too dangerous to try to

home. Weeks later, when she did, she found her apartment had caught fire and burned. The fire had coeverything edible even mice and rats didnt waste their time. Everything she had saved was gone

brushing the ashes from a scorched antique iron her mother had given her. It was everything I needepots and pans and everything. Now its gone. She found the body of her neighbor down the hall. A

military headquarters they asked the number of the building but she had no idea how theyd find the

the doors are burned, everything is rubble. Now each night she must look for a place to sleep. Moneywas kept in bills folded in an embroidered handkerchief tucked away amid her clean underwear in a c

box 600$ in rubles. Now she has 76 cents. She carries the wallet in a plastic shopping bag with a p

shoes, her identity card, a sheet, two spoons, a nightgown, a plastic tube of sugar, a broken pair of eye

her sisters address in Moscow, old gas bill receipts. Im going to do my best to leave but I dont reaat this point. Im 60 and Ive had heart problems and if I could go somewhere I would. These day

looters pick thru the remains of the apartment building. The former residents are dead or gone. The

other day Lyontyeva ran across a couple of neighbors who padded down the street on a carpet of bu

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ings, broken glass and torn pieces of camouflage clothing. The trees in front of the building were brokbattle. Even the discarded cans of Pepsi on the ground had been pierced by shrapnel. Look, a neigh

my refrigerator was stolen. It was here yesterday and today it is gone. Nothing as substantial was le

Lyontyeva's apartment. A copper bracelet lay in the ashes, scorched black. Her home canned jars of foruined. So were her rugs and her good German porcelain service, in shards on the floor. This tablebe used for a color tv. That was our main entertainment. This was my meat grinder. No good any mfavorite book used to be right over here The Thorn Birds. Do you know it? It must have burned.

always kept it on the table. When I was feeling lonely, Id just open it to one of my favorite passages

a bit

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June 30, 1999

Lyn Lifshin

65 years ago, the

Night of Long Knivesin Germany, the Nazisgrinning wildly. Inthe smallest room

over looking peonies

and roses, my mother

was packing a smallvalise, a chair against

the door so if anyone

burst in, they wouldnt

be suspicious of how,in hours, shell sneakout with a new chemiseand her heart pounding.

Or maybe its some

thing in her gut tellingher no. If she doesntrun off to marry this

man shes heard is from

a family of brothers

who make good husbanshe knows she wouldchange her mind andknows before tiger lily

or chicory pressed up

like blue and orangetongues her mouth wouwater for the one she

couldnt keep, doesnt

yet know she will

never not long for

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Successful Spider - Matt Dennison

The successful spiderweaves a web of complexity

outside my kitchen window.What stems and leaves

foul his work he gathersinto an upper-corner canopyunder which he spends his days

avoiding both sun and rain.

My light attracts his prey.

Working quickly, he tires his catchwith fine, tricky steps, spinningthem dizzy like a log-rolling weaver

before drawing them awayto his secluded corner

to absorb them,face to face.

When finished(a fly requires

one day,a beetle two),he drops them to the sill.Lighter than before,

they are gonewith the first breeze.

I weigh my progress against his.By 3 a.m., usually one of us

has somethingto work on.

If not, there is always the web.

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Premise - Matt Dennison

When I was a childwe lived in the country. It

was my job to carry waterto the animals in the evenings.

I didnt mind.

Two borrowed and useless goats

always getting their heads stuckin the wire fence reaching for the

green beyond were mycurrent charge.

And I thought to myself one day:if there is a God He will notallow me to fill this big green

plastic pitcher with water

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and then drop it beforeI reach the pasture

because the animals needwater.

I thought: ifthere is a Godwho does intervene in our lives

on the side of the good and necessary,He will not allow this waste

and sin against the care ofhis beloved creatures.

I turned on the spigotand watched the water

fill the pitcher.

I turned off the spigotand stood up

in thesilence.

I saw my hand reach downand pick up the pitcher.I saw the grass,

the pasture fence,the goats and the blue blue sky.

I filled and dropped the pitcher three timesand then forgot about it.

The animals needed water

and it was up to me.

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Tsunami - James PenhaBlambangan Peninsula, East Java 1994

A mountain explodes beneath the sea,

geysers and oozes and gathers the fishto build its watery tympaniand swirl a music yet unplayed, unwished.

The great wave does not move; plucked she now stayslyrics of potential, song of will be

and wont.Eight billiards in a row: graze

the cue ball against them and none are free

to dance save the last to the sirens song.So natives ballet awash when their landdisappears and continentals whove long

heard the rhythms meet the beat of the band:Impetus, impetus, drums, each to each!

Ballads are sung with the blood on the beach.

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Retrospectives - Joan Payne Kincaid

Aztecs nature in flat adobeStarlings at fat

pretty spotted doors in roomsshe paid for the aleut mask at Southebys

and gave it back descending the stairslike an escalator of Bottlesbawdy embarrassed Feathered boa

love child battlesCat attack in window of won object dart

questions dogged pettyChecksLetters in unanswered crevices

A Christmas Bird clocknow its 5 min.s past the white throated sparrowat the window starlings peck at questions of undo redo

privatized side walks

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Life memories from the corner of mindlessmilitia was so happy the way they were

light as the fluttering ribbon of Rilke in an old poemin her mind of metaphor for songs

the heathen Indians were sent to bloody hell quote unquoteclick remote start over ravingwont you come down the back steps wavingin that wall paper apron, from the grave

you know tis time for a small landscapewhere the lovely flowers have forgotten their names.

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Gulf War Syndrome - R. YurmanAs a result of the Gulf War and the on-goingsanctions, 7,000 children die every month inIraq. 1996 News Report

I try to write.

Streams of angry rhetorictumble down the page.Who could possibly want

to read this? If it weresomeone elses, would I

spend even five minutes on it?I ought to be standingnext to blown-up photographs

of bombed-out hospitalswaving my arms and shouting.

I look at my sona man alreadyhesnever had to wrestlewith his friends over a scrap

of food or watch them bloatfrom drinking foul water,

or triggered one of the missilesbehind these photographs,yet hes learned

if he has no children,they cant be taken from him

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Martha Ford Bolton

My Brothers Keeper

Arthur Winfield Knight

The old blind woman singsa ballad some fool wrote

about Jesse James being shotby a dirty little coward,but that coward is my brother,

Bob, and he got a rewardfor what he done. Maybe

Bob did shoot Jessein the back,but everyone knows

Jesse was a killer. No onewould have faced him.

The old woman stands there,

sightlessly singing,in the faded sunlighton the stone stepsto the courthouse. People

drop coins and billsinto her tin cup,

but they dont know. Nothing.I knock the cup from her hands,screaming, Liar, liar,

then push her into the street,beating her with my fists.

But the old woman stands there,her hands on her head, singing.

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The Gopher Gasser

Arthur Winfield Knight

We try everything:

Fels Naptha soap,Chlorox and water,poison bait,even Ex-Lax. Maybe

theyll shit themselvesto death, Kit says.

But nothing works.

Each morningtheres a new mound,

sometimes two.Our dying lawn has becomea summer camp for gophers.

Finally, we buyThe Gopher Gasser,

lighting the fuseon what looks like

a small stick of dynamite,stuffing it into a tunnel.Now! We can only imaginethe noxious air.

When theres no sign of themtwenty hours later,

we congratulate ourselves.Weve won. But by noontheres a new mound.

Theyre back.We look at one another,swearing hopelessly.

Shit. Shit.The battle rages.

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Fridge - Gertrude Morris

It stands in the corner of the kitchenhumming a little song in praise of cold.

Today I will make a stew.

I reach in for an onion

and whittle its brown papery skin.

There are potatoes in the bin

dusted with sifts of earth.

Out of their blind eyes, pale fingers

grope in the dark for a garden.But its over for them.

Carrots, forgotten in the crisper,sprout feathery plumes green with hope.

But waiting has turned them bitter,twisted as old mens toes.

The stew must go without them.Later, in the swelter of August,

torpid and swollen as a snake,

I thrust my arm in to the elbow

for a frosty nectarine or a plum,

The cold is so thrilling I want to climb in.

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Her Cap - Gertrude Morris

The day before Sabbath

Mother woke me in the early dark

to go to the Live Fish Market.

She led me, half asleep,

up and down several aisles

where fresh-caught fish swam in tanks.

When she spotted her carp,

she kneeled on the floor

and stared at it eye to eye,

as if to ask the carps permission

to take it and it was given.

All the way home in the trolley,

I felt it stirring in its moist newspaper.

At home, she filled the tub with cold water

and the carp swam for one more night.

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Having It All - Joanne Seltzer

The woman licensed pilot isa new mother

a Hebrew teacheran electrical engineer

and beautifuland happy in her marriage toa brilliant, handsome,

egalitarian man.

She looks down upon

one thousand cloudsalone with her joy stickor on a business trip

and sees a cotton-ball ceiling.

Ive never heard her say,

Im not a feminist, but . . .

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Wolf Wish - John Grey

wish I could howlat the moon,

some blood-curdling bayingto level these

sordid playing fields

wish I could surprise

myself with knowingwhat I was doing,with being some place

unexpectedbut perfectly right

wish thoughI didn't have

to feel the painin the throat,the stingingof gravel-scarred knees

wish I was off

somewhere in the distance,flesh tingling,

hair rising,hearing me

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Transit - M. M. Nichols

While Amaryllis was growing

and fulling up to bloom,

and bloomed,

I lived eager on the edge

of her expanding aura.

Now that she begins to die,

while she is failing,

I feelebbing in shallow poems

her deep red glory.

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Whats in the world, then?

M. M. Nichols

adopted children? tumbling

in gardens doing a

handstand to seewhere heaven is

a green sky

and your toes

free to go

flying but you wont

see the waythe world was before

even after your

whirled head

comes up and both feetto a standstill

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Weather at the United Nations - M. M. Nichols

Color of honey at last, the honeylocustleaves are stranded at treetop

like ears of wheatwind-thrashed on a whitened sky.

From top down you can seethe trunks lightningesque

zag, its blackshine, a days rain soaking in.

The leaves, remnant of summer throngs,look puny about

to give in to that ashen sky roiling &in sudden rifts dark.

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Far across the great lawn, at its edge

a gape-jawed, retching dragon liescold & bronze, receiveswith October rain St. Georges

spearhead plunged intoentrails of weaponry:

intricate human artsummoning to prayer.

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Awned over by foliage of pin-oaksgreen still & water-glossed, two

squirrels thrillthe drenched grass with their speed &

their halt, the rummaging& listening they do

into its soft ways.

I think of August,

sunny afternoons, how theyd pause

beside the dragon

and lunch on peanuts prizedout of hiding in the wrecked

rocket cone.

And how Id stop to eavesdrop ontheirprayer: the voracious,

the full-bodied thanksgiving.

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Labor Day, United Nations, 1983 - M. M. Nichols

at the farend of a sunken lawn, fir trees stand before

the scatter of birds on baize-green grass

over herethe air vibrates with heavy winged enginesworking to stay up, carry, and progress

while out thereupon the baize-green smooth lawn move minutely

without sound the tiny birds of September

(Year is included in title because current U.N. visitors cant see fir trees on that site;they were replaced long since by tall sculptures)

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In the Beginning - Ida Fasel

God started with B in Genesis.

He loved his alphabet as I do mine.

I start from Rukeysers pregnant zero:

little o, no bigger than a mountain-scrapped

pebble, within its teeming space

the polishable possibilities of gemstone;

noble capital O, that portered Plato, Isaiah,

Milton over the rough terrain of paradox,

gave Paul the tongue of fire and angels.

Lower case, or upper, o invites

subtle persuasions, inspired motions

that fill nothing with everything

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within the limits of a human life;

lets imagination run with the mind

through all the blood lanes of the heart

to the clarities Bachs B Minor Mass,

a blessing in still air, visio dei.

And all in circle continuity, bound

to begin again where it ends, like

the Genesis day, which starts at evening.

With o of any size you never

run out of pebbles on the access roadto the sheltered beach where you may have

an inkling of the hidden

the whole and holy way to becoming human.

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to find ways through - Will Inman

all over todays world,

provinces of incestuous hate small nations

make war among their own kin,

each with a different face and voice

for the same god,

each tribe obsessed

with truth seen tunnel.

larger nations

posture as parents, play up or play down,

meanwhile enriching their neutralities

with arms sales to all sides.

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absence of war

is not peace. armed peace does not make

for freedom.

Miriam, hark to the talking

tree, dont wait for your brother. you

question the Voice yourself:

I Will Be

That I Will Be

summons all tribes to find

ways through these oceans of kin blood

14 October 1998,

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Elgin Street, 2. a.m. - Joy Hewitt Mann

Shadows move like shutters

across the neon lights

and nights eyes find no resting place

but stagger on the littered street

where dreams are crumbled into balls

and words distorted by the cries of rain.

Nothing sings at this amplitude.

first published in Greens Magazine

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One Night Stand - Joy Hewitt Mann

In bed

skin encloses

like a warm fistand worlds blossom / burst

in bouquets of flesh.

Morning

like a lovers heart

dissolves the street lamp lightand love

reflected in a whiter world

is lost.

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Sister Anne - Joy Hewitt Mann

her chaste life

her water-colored days

her thousand-crystalled eyes

her chalky skin stretched on the floor

she folds her bloody hands

across her breast

and thaws his icy heart

her vow of silence broken with a smile

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7Eleven - Joy Hewitt Mann

He was a spindlyquiet kid

whose loose-fitting limbs

alwaysbuckled in a crisisbut he needed the joband soon

did it well.

He was a good kid,

they said.

Tough and loyal.

The stain on the wallmakes the new kid nervous.

first published in Whetstone

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Relic - Albert Huffstickler

They found him lying like a stone

beneath a bush, no mark on him.

The desert sun had burnt him brownerthan he was brown already.

A lizard had crawled up on his forehead

and sat sunning himself, still and brown

against the brown of him

and him brown against the brown earth

and the sun so dark it was almost brownonly the sky clear blue for contrast.

He barely breathed. His eyes were wide,

cognizing a void or deep in shock

and dry from the sun.

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You wanted to blink for him

or, more than that, rise and walk out

of that place where the sun

would only get hotter before it was over

and night floated down like a great black featherover distant mountains, wide plains

and this bare hot place

with its leafless bush and brown still body

which they finally lifted and carried away,

not even certain that what they did was right.

The lizard retreated to a limb of the bushand watched them carefully out of sight.

first published in Coffee & Chicory, Number Six, Spring 1998, Sacram

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very limited printingby Ten Penny Players, Inc.(a 501c3 not for profit corporation)

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Waterways Vol 20 no 10