2003

October

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, October 2003 It seems to me that,

there is a path called Art Albert

paralleling the paths of action, devotion, etc., Huffstickler

from The Way of Art Waterways, April 90

WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream

Volume 24 Number 9 Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher Thomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

October, 2003

Ida Fasel Felicia Mitchell John Grey Geoff Stevens Joan Payne Kincaid

4-5 6-7 8-10 11-12 13-14

Jon Petruschke Joanne Seltzer Joy Hewitt Mann Joan Seifert Herman Slotkin

c o n t e n t s
15 16-17 18-19 20-22 23

Robert Collet Tricaro 24-25 Sylvia Manning 26-27 Barbara Fisher 28

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 envelope. Waterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127 2004, Ten Penny Players Inc. (This magazine is published 8/04) http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

But what if the room takes on water, flips, drifts out? No one with me to call 911, no one daily checking by phone. Greensleeves of my green chair soft elbow rest.
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Drown out there, someone swims to tell. A boy looking for clams looks up. Coast Guard helicopter police boats swarm. Divers leap. Coffee and blankets appear.

Green Peace Ida Fasel

Green sea of silence privileged in time minute to minute this strange sense of peace outward bound.

A neighbor checking her thermometer will notice a different quiet about the house. A policeman breaking in will trace me southeast, between windows, and not know from the light on the scribble in my lap how close I was to the right word.
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Hand-painted Picture Postcard on the Eve of War Felicia Mitchell

Your dove is pink as Pepto-Bismol, But its shroud is the blue of nightfall. Would that it were a simple pigeon And not a harbinger of doom.

Red on white is like blood shed on soil: Over whos right, or over oil. I dont doubt your interpretation. Your dove is pink.
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But how much can art do at all? While your postcard flew through the mail, Bush wasnt fooling with a crayon. He was counting soldiers, one by one. His hawk is as gray as deaths bird call. Your dove is pink.

Grandmother Gave Me Books John Grey

Tiny, slow, bent like a snow-caked bough, she fought her arthritis the length of the hall-way, stopping every few moments to stare the pain down, before struggling on toward my bedroom, a book lovingly hidden in the folds of her red bombazine dress. I could hear her coming from my sick bed, Those brown buttoned boots crackling like fire on the hard-wood floor, her breath, choppy and hoarse, as distinctive as thumbprints.
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At those times, neck puffed up, face spotted, Id be as helpless as her, aching flesh, burning throat, clutching the tide of bright bed sheets for support just as her frail body grasped the white apron tied around her frail waist as if that was the veil between her and death. But she always found the strength to bring me more books, those thick tomes like childs kites for me to fly. Though her narrow, red eyes could no longer unravel the print herself, she knew their value, bony fingers rubbing the binding as if each was a Bible of a sort with a plethora of gods inside to be worshiped like sun through skylight.
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Even now, when I prop myself up in bed, break open a case of Steinbeck or Thackeray, I easily forget that the novel came from the bookshelf in my study. For isnt that a door closing at the edge of my reading lamps soft shadow. Arent those creaking footsteps retreating down the corridor.

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Sadly, good art often runs parallel to art, whereas bad art collides with it.

Sadly Geoff Stevens

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Good art turns on life and devours it with new ideas, like bacteria breaking down a tissue of illusions, or a guard dog savaging an intruder.

Good art turns on life Geoff Stevens

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What Is . . . Is Joan Payne Kincaid

Doesnt matter what the label if you look you will see regardless of sun or moon or season or place you will see people diminishing others you will see divisiveness of class you will see lies to protect the rulers you will see brutality against the poor who cannot fight back as the Prison Justice System
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ensnares them you will see the poor increase becoming a slave class again you will see the wild go extinct for lack of stewardship you will see farmland turned into developments and subsequent food shortages you will see the oceans become empty you will see humanity poised on its own destruction as new forms of death are invented for the military~ you really should take a look.
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My work tests me daily to give up my weapons, not fight back, but share whats there to be said. Its like meditation, clearing my mind again and again, until theres room for my heart.
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My Work Jon Petruschke

Inflammatory Eye Disease Joanne Seltzer

For years I practiced going blind, stumbled along unlit halls, extracted underwear from dark drawers.

Alien speckles now pattern my right eye like a veil.

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Touch is the last of the senses to fade into that long shadow bodies enter all too soon, always too soon.

I rub my nightly shroud as if I were a tailor among the yard goods at my grandfathers store.
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our lives a never ending quest to pattern strengths on the strongest that came before and yet add something to the weave a new thread, a brighter colour, on and on and on.
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It is always unfinished, a family quilt added to year by year, generations following each other through the cloth,

The Pattern Joy Hewitt Mann

Changing the pattern, but always keeping it the same; wishing for an Eastern Star and making Crazy Quilts.

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He built a strong, warm house. A steadfast man, he strove with ordinary tools, hammer, plane, and saw. They say hed lift each plank and timber, and with help, hold it straight out, close one eye, peer down its length, and at the slightest bend or warp, reject it. He chose each board that way.
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Mentor Joan Seifert

Years later, almost a century, now, other owners went to every indoor corner with a lit candle, searching for some give, or weakness that had worked its way into the structure. Outside, wailing winds might find a crevice where the corners joined, blow in, and shift the candles flame.
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He built a strong, warm house and raised a family there. And people of the town saw aptness.

There was no flickering, no surrender of the light, no sound, but silence. The blustering storm, almost a hurricane, turned back on its own ferocity; all held firm.

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Born Again Herman Slotkin

House lights go down, buzz slides to hush, the red plush curtain trembles, then glides aloft.

Born again!

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The Old Japanese Watchmaker Robert Collet Tricaro

With its works exposed, he examined the stem-wind Longines, passed down to me by my father, for signs of old age. The timepiece had been accurate, missing a tick only now and then. But after fervidly applauding Bachs D Minor Concerto last night, the watch stopped.

In spite of its age, its a noble watch, he told me, and with cylinder loupe stuck in one eye, turned the stem five times which produced a minute of ticking. He explained how the rate of going that is, timekeeping, is controlled by a hairspring attached to the balance wheel, like a tiny pendulum.
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I asked where he learned his trade. The forties in Manzanar interment camp. He quickly added, It was like studying in a watchmakers school for three years. Not bad at all; saved my parents a bundle. Besides, that school closed down for good a long time ago. He made a few adjustments, snapped the back cover

into its case, then said, My son too works with timepieces, designing them for NASA. He also learned his trade in California, in a different time, in a different school. Stanford.

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Beneath all the wonder Sylvia Manning

Beneath all the wonder this is truth: youre with me here in the City of Lights or city of love, you who loved to give of light to others.
(for Albert Huffstickler)

You know everything, says my replacement at Madame Montaiguts, when we stop for a drink after seeing the Louvre free on first Sundays of month, as today is.
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But I who know all of why we should not got to war and much of my own countrys darkness know so little, otherwise: only that you, who in one way did not come with me to learn some French, who thought English should be enough for anyone,

are even so here, beside me, learning seeing love, seeing light, but saying Poetry, Sylvie. Nous sommes dans une ville de posie.
First appeared in Fire 21, September 2003, Oxfordshire, England
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