Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol. 23 no. 1

8/3/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol. 23 no. 1

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2002

Janu

Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream


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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, January 2002

I, for one (and others probably)

didnt even know that I was there,

having gone to the Cedar Street

at different times of day

for talks with charlatan poets and editors,

late breakfasts with a crazy and bizarre Australian pornographer,

beers with fellow NYU medivalists;

and we were all unaware

of action-painting, spilling and swirling around.

John Burnett Payne, Sometimes a Name


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 23 Number 1 January, 2002Designed, 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 10304-2127

2002, Ten Penny Players Inc.http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

Sylvia Manning 4-6Joan Payne Kincaid 7Joy Hewitt Mann 8Gertrude Morris 9-11Bill Roberts 12

M. M. Nichols 13

Ida Fasel 14-16Herman Slotkin 17-18Lyn Lifshin 19-20Albert Huffstickler 21-26Richard Spiegel 3,27


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Questions for the Poet Who Also Paints Sylvia Manningfor Albert Huffstickler

Your painting of the woman dressed for town as they once did,if they could, our countrywomen certainly never doubtingif they should, for it was a code to dress for town, at least in near best (even after I was grown and certainly in her time, all her time) evenbefore we needed more reference frame for culture, back when culture waswhat you got at opera or fancy lectures, if you were rich then and there,those kind of women. . .

This woman in some synthetic blue-green, maybe aquamarine, in herso called costume jewelry and made-up pretty-if-she-weren't-so-plump facebeneath a do of curls she scrimped to afford to have done to be presentable,as was said, to make herself presentable

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She's not just anybody's mother come to town now turned itself to city undone,not nice, not a place to do your best to dress for, no. She's mine.She breaks my heart. She makes me wonder if when Mama got to Heaventown

it was after all just a place God let get rundown, interstitial, probably goneto video stores, second-hand porn, all polystyrene littered.

Your woman with her handbag matching black patent shoes,hopefully there before winds chilled, as we were not to wear black patent after Laboholding it with both hands in front of her, clutching primly the little that protectthat place where babies came from, even if none would be coming again from her

With look in her eye as she waits for the Promise, the masculine Divine,suggesting a subliminal worry behind the best she can do to be prettythat He'll say, after all, "She's too fat. I told her thata million times if I told her once,"

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and she'll be sent back, to where she can't even window shop or stopfor a nice cup of coffee, to where between the cleaning and the worryingshe sobs, to where the town kids never go, across the river, across from the mill

Your woman in her blue green street length three-quarter sleeved dressAnd hat (not to forget) there in the decade, one guesses, of the lost dreams, the

Who did you think she might be when she emerged from nothing, having doneher dead level best, as people said, to be presentable, as was always called for,even if she couldn't help looking very scared and a little too fat?

Did she speak to say why she'd come to town? Did she ask for me?

First published in Parting Gifts, wint

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He's at that barely pastsixty stage

when denial sits like a patronat the bar (like himself)and holds forth on all the zillion thingshe knowsnothing about,the wisdom sixty years hasloaded (as he is)and the equally bombed crowd(under thirty) hangs onhis every word('course he's bought them a round)'bout the editors & publishers &

all the other world warpers'specially that young "dirty

long-haired hippie" poetwho lives next door

and he knows every word thatLongfellowever wrote

swears

all the "pervertgoddamn poets" of today"ain't worth an effin' damn."

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Unpublished Poet at the Black Rose Piano Bar Joy Hewitt Ma


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Night Walkers Gertrude Morristo Ed McPhillips

He gave me back the night; I told him so,as we sat on a stoop near St. Mark's Churchdrinking beer disguised in paper bags.

While my peers dozed and dotedon their grandchildren, I was out latebibbing the sauce with a young poet

whose skin was too thin for the worldhis tender body willow slimon Avenue A, a black kid asked for change.

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Eddie gave and gave. Bending to pick upa new penny, I pitched forwardand went laughing, soft as feathers,

on my knees in sudden prayer,a bibulous bubbe fuddled on a single canof beer, staggering out of gravity

into a youth carnival. Eddie cried:"Gertrude! Are you alright?" The kid cried:

"Gertrude! Are you alright?" Mutely

I clutched the shiny prize, in a blazeof Bastard Amber lighting a bodega.The street went loop-de-loop, with illusions

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of Starlight Park on summer nights.The moon tapped my shoulder and beamed: "Yo! Momma!My two dear boys hoisted and stood me

puppet-like, on rubber legs. I giggledat the kids, their hair so purpledmy teeth felt pink. I wanted to be

one of them, to be them, their dybbukdrinking nectar through their ruby lips

to save me for another summer.

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I step cautiously into the house

and sense it is full of people,

some of them regulars,

some new arrivals,

some close family,

some family new arrivals,

some drunk, fewer sober,

some who fight, some peace-loving,some with stories to tell,

some with secrets they dare not tell

some who cook, some who eat out

or rarely eat at all,

some who pay their rent on time,

some who'll sneak out in the dark

of night, all with worries,

some insurmountable,

some who will influence my future,

none that will be entirely forgotte

a few I'll cherish,but most I'll eventually forgive.

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Roomers Bill Roberts


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Cedar Bar, September 1989 M. M. Nichols

The Swedish ivy's long green beardalmost hides the shy white chinabowl suspended rotatingbelow this Sunday's open skylight

over poets arriving, fansagog with busy decibelsbartering Now for Now, betweenyesterday and yet-to-be moon.

Leaves go trailing round in a breezeup there between words and skybefore the poets begin to saytheir yesterdays (still fresh and green).

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Reading Proverbs, Chapter 30 - Ida Fasel

Today Solomon's professorial chair in wisdomis occupied by a Dr. Agur, an unknown.

He speaks in images that show,metaphors that enrich,lists that build momentumfor vital effects.

A poetry workshop!

I take off from his four mysterious things.I catch currents of air to soar

with the eagle,I slither out of the dark cave, a serpent

sun-warming on rock.I lose myself in horizon glimmer

on a ship in the midst of the sea.

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The way of a man with a maid . . .I get lyrical. I cross genres,the poet a musician cadencingthe pledge of body and soul,

the poet a painter picturing eyesconstant to the commitmentto bear each other up with dignityand tenderness when high-noon happinessbecomes more serious than sunny,the poet a poet, every word counting,every line luminous.

The lesson ends on a bonus.The spider taketh hold with her hands,and is in kings' palaces. Can I eversum up the mystery of life in so few words?

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I Sent a Check - Ida Fasel

I sent a check from a full heartKnowing it could not reach

Deep enough into griefTo be the voice of a homecoming step.

I sent a card of sympathyFor I too have suffered loss.But sorrow takes its time to passFrom black to charcoal grey to serenity.

I sent a teddy bear to a childWho had lost her mother and father.Sometimes she wakes up in the nightScreaming wild, and I hear her.

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Epitaph for a Potted Poet - Herman Slotkin

When Dylan Thomas came to our Village

where edgy notions floated free as air,with fresh-made art alive in every nook,

D.T. saw one big boozy bazaar;

and when he'd drunk and popped and pissed way

unnumbered thoughts not thought, feelings not felt,

words not written, it was quite clear he prizedthe precious, luring, common ecstasies

of life and art less than a whiskey shot.

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Greenwich Village - Herman Slotkin

Drifting out of the safe orbit of family,The Village was our big bang.

What mysteries were there unveiled?The hottest art?Titillating sex?The bronco ride of jazz?Theater as close as your skin?Revelation in the second-hand book bins?

All of the above,and in them a liberating new notion:passion drives us riskilyto the very precipice of permissible,enlarging, enriching our lives.

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In the Apartment - Lyn Lifshin

it was gipsy music.

We each had tambourinesas long as I remember.When I was still RosalynLipman. My motherloved the Cossack dancers,how they filled Middlebury

streets one afternoon. Songof Vilnius, Odessa,swords, red pantaloonsswifelled thru dreams a wholeweek. A red kerchief

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hung in the maples near theschool. My mother wouldhike up her skirts up to a mask

to cover her eyes if shecould have, leaped over theCongregational Church spires,left her weeping motherand the husband who couldn'ttalk or dance and the babies

gnawing and mewling, do a kicksquat over the village greenwhere if you weren't Catholic youhad to be Protestant. Anythingelse was too exotic or strange.

She'd dance, slide away inthe night like those gipsieseveryone watched in the store,

especially the one who evenwith 20 eyes on them filchedshoes, like a cat with a rabbitand then came back to flaunt thelace up white leather, said youthought I couldn't do it. Well I

can but now they're yours. Sheleft as quickly as the July night sheloped, slid over the state lineonly now, she dreams of dancing

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Anniversary (The Month of August) - Albert Huffstickler

I got back to Austin August 1, 1973.Janie brought me up from Brownwood

where I'd been staying, for no apparentreason. I had twenty dollars in mypocket. Bob Bryant put me up and Iwent to work for a place called TexasTemporary Placement day labor. Itwas hot. It was dirty. It was uninspiring. I was forty five. I wason the verge of becoming a nobody.Haunted by my failures, sweating outmy bodily fluids on construction sites,Mayflower vans, delivery trucks, Ipondered my future again. Sweating

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and stinking, I told myself over andover, "I'm too old for this shit!"Maybe I was too old for anything. Ihad one skill language. I'd never

understood how to parlay this into aliving. I had a gene missing. Itwas a gene called How to Find a DecentJob and Stick to It. The August sunbore down on me like doom. I wasincompetent. I was ashamed. Lookingback along the road of my life, I

beheld a line of corpses, all of themme. I worked hard. I was desperate.Woodward Furniture hired me away fromthe day labor office. I had a job.It was as hot inside the factory asoutside. All my workmates were

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Mexican Americans. We loved eachother. They thought I was funny.My mother died. I flew back toFlorida for the funeral and came back

more depressed than ever, my lastrefuge gone. My sister gave me $500.I quit the furniture factory, wanderedaround lost, looking at the ground.All this time I'd been trying towrite. I was always trying to write.It was the only identity point I

had in my whole chaotic world. Imet Valerie. I went broke again.Back to day labor. My friend Cogswelltold me, "If you want to keep yourwriting going, you've got to get awayfrom the pressure. To get away from

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the pressure, you've got to get awayfrom the profit motive. Get a jobwith the state, the feds or theuniversity. The university's best."

I narrowed my focus, kept applyingat the university till I got a job.I told them I was a writer. That meantI could type. Clerk Typist. Therest is history: I stayed at theuniversity with a couple of long

sabbaticals and I wrote and narrowedmy focus to poetry, spent my vacationsin New Mexico and dreamed of movingthere, escaping to those wide, hauntedspaces but always came back. I hada job here. I had an identity. I

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kept writing, had back surgery,emerged crippled, struggled on. Ilearned what I'd always dreadedlearning: how to do the same thing

every day over and over and over. Ihit depressions, spaced out, I keptwriting, I kept working. Some daysI didn't know who I was. It didn'tmatter. I was at work. Everybodyelse knew who I was. One day, tomy surprise and everyone else's

I retired with full benefits. Today,this very day, at 71, I sit on thebench in front of the bakery, idle,content. It's hot. I don't haveto work day labor. I don't havemuch but I couldn't work if I wanted

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to Thank God. But I'm writing.I'm writing because that's what I'vebecome, a writer, a poet. It'senough. It's all I can do. But

a part of me is still back theresomewhere, sweating it out on aconstruction site in the August sunas lost as any human can be. Helooks up, sees me watching. He nodswipes his forehead and, face contortedwith anguish, says, "Don't ever

forget me. I'm always here, alwaysa part of you. Forget me andyou die."

from Nerve Cowboy, Number 11, spring 2001, Au

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Poetry As Commodity

Albert Huffstickler

In my neighborhood, they know me.

I'm the Poet. I give it away

and in return receive certain

small favors: free coffee, a

discount here, a nod and wave of

the hand: take it, no charge.

I smile and accept this tribute

as poets have done since the

beginning of time. They honor

me as I try in my small way to

honor them with words of hope

or understanding or maybe just

lamenting the woes we have in

common. I follow an ancienttradition. I don't have much

but get by as poets have done

down the ages. I'm the ragtag

bearer of light, Prometheus,

the fire-bearer, still doing

his thing.

from Iodine, fall 2001, Charlot

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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)

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream vol. 23 no. 1

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