Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 25 no 1

8/13/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 25 no 1

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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 25 Number 1 *January, 2004Designed, 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 -- $33 for 11 issues.Sample issues $3.50 (includes postage).

Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelopeWaterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127

2004, Ten Penny Players Inc. *(This magazine is published 11/04)

http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

Cynthia dEste 4-6Geoff Stevens 7Phylllis C Braun 8Joanne Seltzer 9

Bill Roberts 10

Robert Cooperman 11-3Fredrick Zydek 14-5Ida Fasel 16-9David Lawrence 20-1

David Michael Nixon22-3

Jeanne M. Whalen 24M. M. Nichols 27


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Moment Cynthia dEste

A moment passes.

The hour slips throughhalf-life borders into concave nightwhere the hot breath of midsummersaturates the air.

A singular light shoots past overheadthen disappears.Myriad stars hang from a webrigged to drop, a shroudmystic upon the land.

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All that was clear is now diffused.Dominions lost to a subtle worldThat follows no round.

There is one momentin all time,come behold it.

Crouch here in wild grassesunder the hovering stars,see the falling meteors,the sudden arcs of fireflies.

Let the dim surroundsurrender you to the darand empty silence.

In his one momenta shining avatarmay appear.

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Seeds Left BehindCynthia dEste

November again.A grim curtain obscuresthe darkling sun, dimmedbehind a rim of branchesthat reach up gnarled,empty-handed.

Crows careen and cawover seeds left behind.Nothings leftbut the quick workof squirrels under trees,

under brittle, bargain-tablepiles of leaves.

Growth has never beena constant, nor has harvest.

After fall, after life and ligh

succumb, comes a refugeof artless dark where formis diffused with mysteryand all things becomeagain possible.

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Geoff Stevens

Complete homogenization

is the death of identitybut emulsions break

separate to constituentsreveal their pasttheir pedigrees

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Then and NowPhyllis C. Braun

The wind took them,ghost voices wailing,across the buffalo grassto the old Black Hills.Sounds of chanting

magic incantations,coyotes howl, owlets cry,eagles scream fromblack wings soaringin the empty sky.

Darkness falls,

lightning flickers,thunder like agreat earth drumreverberatinga thousand buffalostampede, run.

From this ancient tribal dreaawakingto the chaos of the planetbreaking.

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10/29

Asylum Joanne Seltzer

This is a treacherous place

to live. Genuine people,made of clay, crumble under-foot. The rest observethe evening news withoutgoing crazy. Turn the dial,my clairvoyant mother, twistyour prophets wrist. Youcant witness lunacy withoutgoing crazy. Dont just

vegetate upon your bed &

wait for something to happen,learn to paint ashtrays ifyou plan to go home. Whydo they walk away? You saynobody talks to you becausethey know they cant withoutgoing crazy.

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Before DiamondsBill Roberts

Some time long, long agobefore recorded memoriesand recorded musicprehistoric manunshowered, unshaven,

and uneducatedgot down on bended kneebefore his woman(the woman he wantedto be his woman)

dug for the biggest stone,didnt bother to remove

the dirt or polish it,then gave it to herfull-force by handto her thick noggenas a token of his sincerityand proud ownershipthat has taken years,thousands of them,to diminish his harshdisputed dominance.

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Edgar Goodrich, Outfitter,Comments on Sheriff Donnehys Shooting of the Boy William Pete

Gold Creek, Colorado Territory, 1870

Robert CoopermanGood riddance to the little heathen,his dirty fingers in my candy jars.My wife made excuses for him:"The poor tyke dont know better,

raised up amongst savages."All them Injuns was thieving magpies;us patriots wiped out his band,shouldve done him like the rest,but when we saw he was white,

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we rescued him; he kicked so hard,I trussed him to a saddle like a dead man.

When Preacher and his Missus

took one look at him, they sobbed liketheir long-lost son had returned,them never blessed with a child,and this one wasnt no blessing:demons jumping out of him

like hed gripped a telegraph wire,the juice streaming to make him hollerfilthy words at me, like, "Greasy weasel,greedy weasel!" over and over.

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Injuns call simpletons like him "Holy,"more like imps that curdle milkand scare women into miscarrying.

When Sheriff saw him waving a .45that somehow witched into a Bible,Big Ed had to fire, for the sakeof our women and children.

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Coat of Many Colors Fredrick Zydek

It was exceeding great mortality

when Hells black bellycaught the white fear of Pharoahshungry eyes in dreams so webbedonly a herdsman could reweave them.

He told of wind and locust spinningdry, of a day when the thunderssecret would no longer slam amongthe trees, of spindly cows and barrenwrens and a loss of portly gems.

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He became the keeper of the harvestsand when the famine came, it brought

those who tried to kill him, seekingmercy and the bounty of his barns.He gave them like the coat off his back.

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Song of Myself Ida Fasel

Whitman, you pause to wait for me, busy me,getting out from under British Quarterlies,

searching influences and sources,sorting footnotes for more and moremanila folders and index boxes.Old friend, you are saying,go back and read me.

Your grammar is edgy.Your lines are sloppy.Your thought simplistic.How the sound of your voice on the pagescatters my precious accumulationslike a fresh breeze surprising dusty digs!

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I watch your two apprentice boys wrestling:

The coats vests and caps thrown downThe embrace of love and resistance

The upperhold and underhold the hairRumpled over the blinding the eyes.

I think of Jacob at Peniel,tenacious till the angel blessed himand left him lame but aloft.I think of myself, pulled from, pulled to.

Your eyes are loopy with laughter.In love of the least love of all.

Repugnant, irresistible you, embrace me.I stagnate in self-contradiction.

First published in Walt Whitman R

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The Right Stuff Ida Fasel

When I read an apes DNA almost

Matches mine and deserves inclusionIn the genus homo, I think it moreLikely we shall diminish to his levelRather than he rise to ours.

Can he stand beside me in churchAnd confess to the small ways in whichWe are guilty of great omissions?Has he, like me, left undoneThose things we ought to have done,

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and done those things we ought notto have done?"* Does he worry abouthis mental health, not as it should be?

When I read psychologists who identify meAs a little house of horrorsFor which they only have the key,Where years have drifted snow bank high,I find the key already in my purse

And push open the door to roomsPleased to welcome me so much improved.

*from the General Confession, The Book of Common

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Disappearing Prints David Lawrence

I look for you in the desert.

Your feet dont leave footprints.Your journey unpeelsItself with eachStep.In your beginningIs your endAnd in your middleIs yourFailure to appear.I am not agnostic.

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I Am: An Introduction David Michael Nixon

I am a song unwinding in the dark caverns

of daylight and nighttime; I am a dull processof creeping life, among insensate beings;I am a pulse of pain, devoid of pleasure;I am thought and feeling tangled, impenetrable briars;I am complexity beyond knowing;I am a simple urge to stay alive;

I am a simple urge to die;I am a slow, short basketball playerwith an endless will to win; I am the poetrooting for acorns under an ever-changing sky;

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Kristallnacht - Jeanne M. Whalen

Her last words were silenced

by Reissdorf-klsch-bottle torchesslicing through the bay window,through dinner preparationsand her daughter's story timewith Uncle Geschichtemannwhile the man of the house,

raw from work,was resting his headon the cool bedroom wall.

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The night caved in around him,callously devoured the better halfof his God-fearing bungalow,and he stood stunneduntil his brother called to himthrough the smokeand his hands startled,sweeping the artificial darknessfor protection.

He staggered into the raucous streetwith a jacket that wasn't his,pockets full of pictures,ducking the budding mobs of Hitler Youth,the glass shards mingling in the street,and the sputtering blaze haloing his home.

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Color Negative M. M. Nichols

Out here, starlings poke at the managed lawn,

ghost lawn striped green on green by power mowingwhile my thoughts cultivate themselves.For example, why I mind when you dont hearwhat I say between your sentences.I dont want to hear you say again& at length No and No, deaf to your own

wonder.So I lit out for lawn and bird.

Crowns black sheen, brownfeathered bodies,yellow pertinacious beaks target known

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but hidden till they yank it out, diviningwhere: a tooth deeper than turfs green,no place but earth.

They keep tapping in,Badger the vast management of greenness.Flying is something else. They say Yes! and Yes!and startle up to sunshine. My dark glassesturn them garnet red those dusky hunterswho wear a pitch-black glory in their crowns.

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 25 no 1

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