Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 20 no 1

8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 20 no 1

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Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream

1999

20th

Anniversary

Jan


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Waterways: Poetry in the MainstreamJanuary 1999

Cut with your certain wings; engrave space nowto your ambition : stake off skys dimensions.

from PreambleTheory of Flight (1935)Muriel Rukeyser


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 20 Number 1 January, 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 (incpostage). 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.

Will Inman 4-5

David Michael Nixon 6

Geoff Stevens 7

Joan Payne Kincaid 7

Arthur Winfield Knight 8

R. Yurman 9-13

Charles Pierre 14

Marion Herget 15

Ida Fasel 16-18

Lyn Lifshin 19-21

Albert Huffstickler 22-24


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a gravity that works by will - Will Inman

farmost flight moves wingless infinite intakes a stretch of that to gird up for going out yonderearth-gravitys roots reach just so fara deeper gravity than grounding can guide outward

space measures only in motion, nothing out thereis fixed: orbit runs on invisible tracks, pullspeaks a dialectic among inmost cores, you

must carry a gravity that works by will

but no willing travels independent: everywhirl and globe and cosmic wind, every flarepulse wave -- impinges on each other.

you must become cosmic random to transcend

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yet even transcendence moves in orbits createdwingless in nectars of distance: no one outreachesgod except by entering and being entered bya harmonious resonance of all forces come aum

such communion, being still, travels farmost:a raveling of disparate resonance occursvoiceless, wordless, yet comes consciousin shoulders baited reachless with space

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Pumpkin Morning - David Michael Nixon

On the horizon, an orange dot expandsuntil the whole rim of the sky is suffused inorange; then the middleground goes; then the stain spreadsto the near distance until orange covers the earthin all directions, three-hundred-sixty degreesof vibrant orange light, a jack-o-lantern daywith no darkness, just this dazzling pumpkin morning.

first appeHornell Area Arts

1998 Art & Poetry C

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Dragonflyer - Geoff Stevens

Over the water, you flyout of pre-history,

your veined perspex wingscutting the dense air, the aspic,in which you are preserved.I can hear your engine droning,as, skull-capped, your outboard-pilottakes you through the ages

The Deer - Joan Payne Kincaid

Crosses the Triboro Bridgeits tied black hooves shine horizontallwhite tail bounces a last run;wide-eyed, no longer needing visionclearly dead in the high wind it cannotall who see feel diminished...to commuters this stiffened stillness

of plac

out of timeriding over menon top of a red Subaru Station Wagon

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Bill Carlisle: 1964 - Arthur Winfield Knight

They gave me life for robbingthe Portland Rose Train

and the Overland Limit,then they reduced my sentenceto 50 years, and I thoughtId be grateful. I wasnt.When I escaped, I robbedanother train near Medicine Bow,but the posse caught up with me

at Rock River. I hid, unarmed,in a corral filled with sheep,but someone shot me in the chest.I smelled of wet wool and dungwhen the guards brought me back.The men in my cellblockall began to baa.

The prison doc saidId be dead within a year,but the chaplain got me a parole20 years later. He promised

hed serve the time himselfif I ever robbed another train.I borrowed enough moneyto open a cigar shop in Kemmerer,then I bought a motel and cafeon East Grand Avenue in Laramie.Everyone came to see the old outlaw.

All the papers wrote me up.Last year, the doc told meI have cancer; Ill be deadby the end of this year. I laughedand said Id heard the same thingin 1919 but, at night, I can smellsomething rotting in my body.

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The Float n Fly - R. Yurman

beat-up floor boards and all-woodstools thats cracked and dried

shop next doors the Bait n Tackle--most bars dont even open till noonbut these folks want somethingbefore they go outcould be 5 a.m.or mid-morning

when they come back inturns my days upside downfrom what they was

when I worked that divey placein town next to the all-night diner

Chat n Chew-- seems like every placearound here has to have two names likeanyways the men is about all the samemy age and older

lean and graywhether their eyes are dull or clearget up at four to go after the fishor stay up till threestaring into the bottom of a glass

this lakes clearer than whiskeyand the fish jump dawn or eveningat every fly they castto hear them tell itstill their creels sit mostly emptywhile they hunch their elbows

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on the bar and talksuck on pipesspit their lungs clearto catch the smell of mist

the chill off the lake

you know its going to be a good daywhen the first ones backcome in quietlylugging something more than airin those wicker baskets

they sip cool beerstalk about sonsor fathersthe way they usedto get out there and castpull in the world

but most days its noisethey carry with them

leaning their rods by the doorlaughing too loud shoutingat me and each othertromping their wadersacross the floor and rattling the stooits fire they want thenshot glasses lined up on the barand fish stories they tellclanking against the morning cold

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Twins - R. Yurman

1.At conception

each of ushas a womb companion,a twin

sloughed off so soonour mothers are leftunaware of the one

who might have curled beside us.

Deep in that warm dream,we go on alonecells dividing madlyto replace

a sister perhaps,fathers faithful girl --the daughter he always

longed for--loving

noise and light and the tasteof gambling on the air, she would havewalked beside him, her armlinking through his, the soft

folds of her dresskicking out with every step.Or brother who would havemade our mother laugh,

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called her by her name, the childwho would have

let herlove him--she wouldnt ask

so much from him--would havefretted less over whathe ate, who he placed with,what was to become of him.

Mother and father bothmight shine in the lightreflected by an offspringthey cold forever hold and stroke.

They had instead to deal with you,you and your surly touch-avoiding shruhad always to ask,

What is it we have done?

2.What if both surviveclinging to that shared space--do they look each otherin the eye and think,My image, my shadow,one of us was supposedto slip away.

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Womb-mates, they laytogether like sixes curledfeet to face. Now motherand father keep seeing

the two as one, a neat pairof jacks, openers, a handto bet and raise.

But they want only to breakaway, each claiming his ownname, her own fate. Stillthey share that memory beyond memoryof lying together fluid and warmocean-wise like dolphinsall skin and slide.

While the rest of us, untwinned, cannrecall such easy coupling,paired moves in the darkness

under our mothers pulse,the deep heart-beatwe carry with usinto this world of loss.

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Albatross - Charles Pierre

From this teemingbirth rock and

sedentary nest,

this crampedislands squabblingdomesticity,

I fly to unsettled waters,my one companionthe fugitive wind.

Tern - Charles Pierre

No vision thiswhite flash

against the dun sky,

but a pulsing form,a feathered blur,a bird plummeting

through air, splash, and upwith a wriggling giftfrom the cold shallows.

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Crane Flies Dont Ask - Marion Herget

Crane flies dont askthey just tiptoe on a sunshaft

like a silent tinkle of bellsor a kaleidoscope

They dont know its frost timethey dont ask if anyonelikes their poetrythey just run along the airwith their thousands wings

Why count the dayswhen you have only one

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Cosmic - Ida Fasel

He is locked into silver cloth -- Nylonfull body suit with torso and leg zippers.

He sports the pockets with his hands,the flag and shuttle patches with a faceof secure joy. Even before the package came,before the earlier cap (Feel like a high flierwearing our bold navy gold trim hat!)he had an instinct for upper air and could getground level to yield between thumb and forefinger,with sputter and zoom and intricate sweepsof the guiding arm. Hes outgrown kites.He likes to accomplish things. Airborne,he shouts to me along with sound effects,bound for a star somewhere in the North Latitude,

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flight plan from the constellation viewer,a present, like all his toys,from the Smithsonian catalog.Light years away, he comes aloft

his graham bears and milk, happy for a touchof earth so far from it, and a stowaway beside himto shore up his first meeting with aliens.

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Cracking Open a Geode - Ida FaselIf you can draw the stone, you can draw anything

John Ruskin

We found it just short of the corner pine,where snow rests safe and stillpast calendar spring,among rare red columbine, mullein,bush wispy yellow clover...wildness with some finesse,gifts too from space.

They say cracking open a heavenly bodyshard shell exposes the wealth inside.Its crevices bore the deep cutof ancient ink, like Hebrew letterscentury to century in narrative.

I wanted to break in right away. I safacing choirs of clustered amethysts:mineral wonders, gems, small songsof themselves scored for passage

long as a journey across China.They waited for light of the opento turn their light side toand turn their dark side fromthe world they newly illuminated.

I babbled treasurable expectations. Youin your age of reason and spoke of oddBut as you prepared to strike and Ito cover my eyes, the stone walls glowazure-violet in all the nuancesof light and shade and shades shade.

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The Man Who Collected Postcards of Holiday Inns - Lyn LifshinBased on a Washington Post article June 28, 1998

hundreds of them, in plastic sleeves - aerial shots,parking lots, some with people like mannequins

around a pool. A lady with a mink stole drapedover her chair in a Holiday Inn in Memphis.He pours thru them after a long day of legal work,alone in his office, smiles for the first time all dayremembers an L shaped building off a highway.It was the greatest trip of my life. Sidney Ohio,July 1967. The sun low as the mint green 1966Plymouth Fury rolls out the gravel driveway at7:23, a sea of corn and wheat flashes by. A manin shirt sleeves with a woman in a flowered blousesitting beside him, who will ration out the baloneysandwiches on buttered Wonder Bread. ThePlymouth makes a turn and thru the windshield,a stretch of asphalt that reaches out forever.

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Thursday, the 20th of July, the summer whenAmerica had nearly half a million soldiers inVietnam. Race riots like brush fires. In a smalltown: Vacation Time Ladies slacks for 2.99.

The car smells of hot vinyl. No one has airconditioning. The car swerves thru Kentuckyand Tennessee into Georgia as the sun fallsbehind them. He remembers his mother saying noto a small motel and wrinkling her nose and then,up ahead, deep green emerald and white letters,the curving yellow arrow: The Holiday Inn. Heremembers pushing the door open and the heat

disappearing. His lungs full of a mist that tastedlike snow flakes, remembers running barefootin the hall with an ice bucket to a huge machinewhere he flips up the lid and his head jerks backa couple of inches in surprise. A field of diamonds,thats what it looked like. Ice cubes clear as glass.He watches his parents lounging in patio chairs,

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drinking gin and tonics, his father lighting a Pall Mall,his pale ankles in the moon light. In the dark the 45foot high Holiday Inn sign flickers to light. 836 feetof neon. Now, 30 years later, Marriots, Hyatts,Hiltons and even Holiday Inns blur, just a showerand a bed. Half the names in his address book arecrossed out. He goes back to a box of photographs,500 faded old motels: delightful dining enjoymentawaiting you at Holiday Inn of Worcester in thePersian Room restaurant. It was just before hisfather walked out. He hasnt seen him for 18 years,doesnt know if hes alive. Like his father, he

works a lot, drinks his 4th Dewars that the waitresskeeps refilling. Hes thinking about that first HolidayInn. Smiles about jumping off the diving board, havingfried chicken. His face lights up thinking how hisfather, who never said much, cheered when he jumped.If the motel is still there, its what hed love to get back to

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The Void - Albert Huffstickler

Theres always a void.Theres a void between your bedroomand the kitchen.Theres a void between the kitchenand the front door,an indescribable void betweenhome and work.The void is betweenone known place and the next.The void is what

we came through to get hereand what well face when we leave,Every time someone leavesthey leave a void.You can say we journeyfrom one familiar place to the next

or, conversely, you can saywe journey from one void to the nextWhen love comes,everything before it is a void.

When love leavesall that remains is a void.On good daystheres light all around us.On bad dayswere in the void.Someday well dieand that, we think, isthe biggest void.But perhaps, just perhaps,the place were at nowis the void of somewhere elseand in that place,theres no void at all.

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One Life - Albert Huffstickler

One life Ive lived this timeis in the back booth of a diner

or cafe, out of the way, drinkingcoffee, smoking, watching thepeople, writing things down.In this life, I could be mute,I dont talk to anyone, I

just watch and listen and write.Thats it. This is one person

that Ive been this life, acrossthe country, Canada, parts ofMexico, observing, recording.Its a life. Its a way oflife. Its a place where Ifeel comfortable: nothing I

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have to say, no one I have torelate to. I have had otherlives this time but none morebasic. Its lonely sometimes

but even the loneliness isntreally uncomfortable: it fits.I could wish that some of myother lives fitted as wellbut thats carping. We playthe hand thats dealt us andhope we leave behind something

of worth but we dont know.Somewhere in all those lineswritten in all those placesthere may be a line that lasts.If not, there was still the

doing of it, the peace of aroom where people come to eator drink coffee or talk andalso, though theyre not aware

of it, to be watched andwritten down.

from Simpl#

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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

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 20 no 1

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