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"W" A TER'W A YS: Poetry in the Mainst:ream February, 1997

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""'\.XT A TER ""\XT A YS: Poetry in the Mainstream Volume IS Number 2 February, 1997 Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher

Thomas Perry, Assistant '

CO.r1t::e.r1ts

Robert Cooperman Peggy Raduziner Joan Payne Kincaid Kit Knight

Doreen Craig Karen Kirby

4-5 6

7 8-n

12-13 14

Joy Hewitt Mann Natasha Sylvester Gina Patterson Ida Fasel

Lyn Lifshin

Albert Huffstickler

15-17 18 19 20-21 22-23 24-28

Waterways is published II times a year. Subscriptions - $20 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (includes postage). Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelope. Waterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2I27

© 1997, Ten Penny Players Inc.

2

3

Fanny Brawne Receives Notes fromJ ohn Keats in the First Days of His Illness

Robert Cooperman

He will break my heart

with his forced cheerfulness,

his writing me to guard against chills. Mama asks after him hourly, calculating the day that will free her to find me a rich suitor:

"Poets all very well," she will admit, "but rhymes aren't pounds

if no one reads your volumes.

4

John refuses to ruin maidens in verse, so his book languishes, while Byron-who could swim in his inheritance-persuades virgins to sink

and is swept on the tide of fame.

John lies next door,

but the doctor forbids him excitement. Will we cavort like birds of prey?

I would only read to him, knit

while the thrush twitters hope

and an early spring from a nearby shrub. I pass his window on my walks,

so he can have a glimpse of me,

but Mr. Brown conspires with Mama; he would keep John all to himself,

a horrid guard dog that will lick

its master to death with sulphurous affection.

I sit and think of] ohn

while Mama sighs, "Poor Mr. Keats," but Dr. Bree claims nerves alone caused the hemorrhage and heart palpitations, and prescribes rest.

One touch of my hand

or lips would cure him,

but vultures demand his death,

the cult of one more poet doomed to greatness in fifty useless years.

5

Shocking News Peggy Raduziner

As gossip freely flowed - Suddenly the foorbeil rang. "Telegram," the young boy said.

I signed for it -- then handed it to my aunt

whose hands shakingly opened it - Her eyes popped and she passed out in her comfortable armchair.

My uncle reached for the crumpled yellow ball on the floor. He smoothed it -- read it -- and started to shout.

Then he handed it to my mother who burst into tears

and gave it to my cousin, Beatrice. Beatrice groaned in despair. You could cut the gloom in the room with a knife.

Being the youngest - I saw the telegram last.

With a lump in my throat -- I read my cousin Peggy's message, "Mom - I just wanted you to know

I didn't go the library today--

instead -- I married Joe."

6

Family Get-Together Joan Payne Kincaid

Waking up to the idea was overwhelming essentials ... timing it, feeling too tired to on your feet get to the animals- feed (don't bend over with a bad back

the large red Dobe insisted on.) .. always there like a mountain to climb.

Delivery requires a tip so you pick up entrees, garlic bread to get back to dealing with relationships and diplomacy (next week the bathroom would still not be painted or even clean enough).

Keep them moving and they vote

not to sit around the table

all the time we're trying to keep the dog socially "in", rolling around in the middle

you delegate little jobs .. Joe heats the bread and burns it and the entrees

then it's everybody off to the computer

for games the men seem compelled to play.

Your life force begins to falter

by the cake and pie you never had time

to shower or repair the livingroom ceiling eleven people and a baby with chairs

all around and drinks to hold rum on our laps the Dobe had to be put out in a warmed car.

You try to remain placid taking pictures

of everyone especially Henry Arthur

with them all so he would remember

a sense of family and Sally was so glad because Peter just moved out and they were feeling deserted, after the pie

videos were shown of Henry Arthur

to send everyone home.

7

Sheri Floyd, 1970: Singing for Grandpa Kit Knight

My dad was nine in 1934 when he got up at 2 a.m. with 27 family members

and the rest of the town to meet the train carrying the body

of his father, the outlaw

Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Hundreds of people came

to walk Charley

home. Two uncles in tears as they grasped

the metal handles. So cold. My dad told me over and over

8

how the whistle wailed over and over. Almost as if

the train were saying

to our people, "I'm sorry;

I know the FBI did wrong telling all the newspapers over and over

Pretty Boy was a killer. The FBI did wrong and I'm so sorry."

Four times granddad tried to turn himself in

and all he wanted was protection

from the death penalty. He was willing to he tried

for the bank robberies.

He did them. But he wasn't

a murderer. The FBI hunted grandpa down and shot him. Grandpa's mother called Hoover "a piss ant-

a little piss ant." Now, 36 years later I sing

Woody Guthrie's ballad about my grandpa. Woody heard the Oklahoma train whistle, too. My favorite part

is how Woody never heard of . a' hanker buying Christmas turkeys for a family on relief

but the outlaw did.

9

The Mother of the Only

Civilian Killed in the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 Kit Knight

Folks said it was God's punishment that my Ginnie died because

a neighbor saw her wavin'

to Confederate troops. I can't conceive of my God being

that mean. Besides, Ginnie only did it

because her beau is off fightin' Rebel troops in Virginia and

Ginnie hoped some southern woman waved to Union soldiers and reminded them

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-gently, softly--

this War will end. Ginnie made bread for Yankees and slipped it out a back window. I helped her bake, but the soldiers

-some wounded, all wearyliked the biscuits best

if they came from Ginnie's hands. Ginnie's smile. Those men needed

more than hardtack. The battle was in its third day. Yanks

in back and Rebs out front. We'd grown used to

the impossible - bullets whizzing by, but none

had come through the walls. For 16 years my daughter has been here. With me. Near me. I called her Gin Gin when

we shared my body. Weare both blondes. My Gin Gin

was in the kitchen,

alone,

when a bullet

smashed thru a door and into her back. She slumped over the bowl and I got there

in time to watch her kneaded dough turn crimson.

II

Runaway Doreen Craig

The acrid taste in my mouth didn't lie.

The persimmon was not fully ripe.

But, this was not a time for waiting.

I pushed open

the fire escape door, and ran into the night which held my dreams in its outstretched hand.

My love was in a secret place. I embraced

his ebony trunk, feasted on his sweet, edible flesh, ripe and ready.

He spoke

the words I longed

not to hear. We can't.

We can't run

into the night, as spirits kindred and free,

unearthed by common ground.

We can't.

The words cancelled my no-fault assurance, returned my tickets for a flight

into fantasy.

Unaccompanied

by harvest's moon, barring it's shadow,

I walked away

from the girl I had been for fifteen years ...

left her there ...

buried her in her dreams.

13

W'hat Puck Didn't Ten Karen Kirby

seen upon awakening

from fantasies of the night. So the moralis easy--

love is blind.

It isn't who you sleep with.

But listen, here's the important part-take care who you wake with!

Cupid's arrow missed the mark and the virgin went unscathed. And falling to earth it landed soft on a pansy, purest white.

Turning it purple with desire-magic from that time on.

Its nectar dropped

on a sleeping eyelid

caused a most curious thing. The unwary victim

would fall fast in love

with the very first living creature

Window Pain Joy Hewitt Mann

That bird knows

her tree promises an unending supply of chances to sing, breaths moistening each note to the smoothness of a come-an-line, and yet

she does not stay rooted, but tugs free, rising, wings outstretched,

after one long, feathering trill

that brings no reply.

I should give up on you, take a bus to Charleston and

go shopping, or wish for a rain shower to write daydreams on this window, or

practically anything.

But I shouldn't sit dejected like a frowsy sparrow, and,

damn it!

I' shouldn't run for the phone.

I5

Women as Meals

Joy Hewitt Mann

We women are sapid creatures,

our muscles a confection given to quivers and sugary sighs. Our minds are pop-up toasters, drop in

bland thoughts they come out warm and tasty, add a layer of emotions for sweetness,

feed to men who are always

hungry for the image that goes so well with meaty muscles and minds

as strong as overbrewed coffee.

Like Alice we read the signs:

Eat Me or Drink Me, not knowing if we help men grow or

diminish them.

J

16

POTPOURRI Joy Hewitt Mann

She had arranged it so nicely:

the scented candles in the bathroom carnations and roses beside the sink

oil of patchouli iridescent on the surface of the water.

She lay back, hands folded over her breasts. A smile imagined him

it finding her;

shock and recognition of her love finally finding him.

But the pills rebelled against the fantasy, and trying

to reach the toilet, she fell.

The landlady told the cop how glad she was

cinnamon and roses

almost covered up

the smell.

17

In and Out the Currents

Natasha Sylvester

I run pell mell, thinking to follow

The fulgent odor of lilac, honeysuckle, basil and thyme, Sweet alyssum, coriander and bay.

Headlong I belt, nose upturned,

Skimming shiningly through kitchens of memories, Those long sweet days of families,

The air alive with cross purposes,

Tucked behind the annual autumnal blessings:

My father carves lopsidedly, losing his direction, My mother resets the fulcrum, yet again, My-brother slides down the avenue of oblivion, And I take up the basket of wind currents, Thinking to follow their darkly passage, Blowing in, now out, now in, once more.

18

StonnMe Gina Patterson

A sudden deafening crack outside my window stirs a sickening pounding in my brain And the wind whistling through the trees leaves a rushed, cold feeling in my heart

And I watch the pain of the loves that once were and the friends that weren't

and the sadness

and the disappointment

and the remaining unpleasant emotions spill silently to the ground

Unrehearsed Ida Fasel

Dorothy and I were having lunch on the 54th floor of Security Life, enjoying every hair

of our seafood-sauced angel hair pasta when someone picked up the extra chair, smashed a window, jumped. I thought

of Melville, who thought he was dreaming, remembering a man overboard

to whom he threw a rope.

The man played with it, let it go, pillowed his head cosily

in the calm sea. The ship moved on. We got up to look and ambled back

as the siren closed in on our dessert.

From the blood-spattered concrete he still turns up to me his astonishing face.

"If was merry," wrote Melville.

20

To Begin With Ida Fasel

Three things I fell in love with at first sight:

a pair of mahogany chairs

whose design had an air of breeding yet respected simplicity, the frame centered in a single carved rose;

the color lapis lazuli in a rug, generating solidity, light, and a sense of peace;

the man who stood beside me,

his eyes brown and courteous and warm, who also had three on his list -

the chairs, the rug, and me.

2[

The Can of Paint Lyn Lifshin

She opens the front door Tuesday morning dressed in dirty rags holding a little aluminum paint can in her arms. From the moment she stepped inside the shelter she mystified us one woman said. Whatever she did, wherever she went, the little paint can never left her hands. When Kathy sat in the crisis shelter, the can in her arms. She took the can with her to the cafeteria that first morning she ate and to

bed with her that first night she slept. When she stepped into the shower the can was only a few feet away. When she dressed, the can rested alongside her feet. "I'm sorry, this is mine," she told the counselor. This can rested near her feet. "Do you want to tell us what is in it, Kathy?" everyone asked her. "Umm, not today." When Kathy was sad or angry or hurt, she took her paint can to a quiet

22

dorm room on the jrd floor. Many times, a woman says, I'd pass by her room on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and watch her rock gently back and forth, the can in her arms. Sometimes she'd talk to the paint can in low whispers. Later when asked just what was in the can she rocked back and forth, her hair swaying across her shoulders, she said, I1It's my mother. It's my mother's ashes.

I went and got them from the funeral home. See, I even asked them to put a label right here on the side. It has her name on it." A little label on the side chronicled all that remained of her mother. Date of birth, date of death, name. "1 never really knew my mother," she said, III mean, she threw me in the garbage two days after 1 was born. Police, newspaper say, found me two days after I was

born. I ended up living in a lot of foster homes, mad at my mother. But then I decided I was going to try to find her, I got lucky. Someone knew where she was living. 1 went to her house. She wasn't there. My mother was in the hospital. She had AIDS. I went to the hospital and got to meet her the day before she died. My mother told me she loved me."

23

1.

Dawn's early light finds her

crouched over coffee bedraggled.

She looks like she does not remember

what happened last night. She smokes, brow knit, counting costs,

gamin face gaunt

in the merciless morning. Something was lost

but

this is not the time to think about it.

Four Cafe Poems

by Albert Huffstickler

2.

My mother liked to watch people. She taught me

to store details

as a squirrel stores nuts against

a winter of tedium. That woman reading, eyes on her magazine, lights a cigarette, shifts it to her

other hand, sips

from her cup,

sets it down

in the exact same epot never taking her

eyes from the page.

3·

He's lost his

continuity, sticks a cigarette in his mouth, lifts his coffee cup, stares at it, sets it

down, digs in his pants pocket for

a lighter, lights

his cigarette, smokes, takes cigarette from his mouth. And now lifts the cup again and sips. Then

sets cup down,

lifts his cigarette, smokes, then looks around him, suddenly aware:

they could be watchingeven here.

4· She leans into

the winds of time, chin resting on

the palm of her hand, eyes vacant--or stunned. She is resting here .. She

will go on but

first she must rest and so

she sits face blank, giving nothing away but

she sits too still.

first appeared in Cotton Gif~ Greensboro, N.C. 1996

The Return Albert Huffstickler

She said she was back to stay. She was older, a little sadder but still beautiful and her beauty didn't bum now, it was not something you were afraid of, not incandescent. I think it was the first time I'd ever

been comfortable with her. There was something else: there was

a depth to her beauty you could never see in a younger woman. We worship youth so much but

youth is just youth and young beauty has a casualness about it, it doesn't really belong

to anyone particularly its wearer. This was something else. This was a woman you could be with, a woman you could feel comfortable making mistakes with. "I'm glad you're back," I said. "I'rn glad

you're staying." And then we were silent for a long time. That was something else tha t had changed-there wasn't all this need to talk, to describe

what we were experiencing. \Vhen we touched at last, it was like a deeper silence. Finally she said, "1 t's like

all those years you were

trying to prove something, you didn't even know what, didn't even remember who you were trying to prove it to. And then one day you wake up and there's nothing to prove, there never was. It's like

the pressure is off and so

now you can finally love someone if you want to, not

make anything of it, just

let it be there. That's the thing. You don't want to make love do anything, not anymore, you just want to let it be there. And you can because you don't want anything from it anymore.

I t's not a commodity, it's not a happiness-producing machine. It's just that

. t~ng that happens to be there like a tree or a rug, you

see. And that's all you

want, all you ever wanted."

Poetry Motel #24,

27 Duluth, MN. 1996

Trial by Fire

Albert Huffstickler

Loneliness is a cold flame

that flays the soul.

When you pass through the fire

you know things then that

no mortal man should know. You're Lazarus come from the dead living among men with

your death still on you,

knowing too much to ever have a friend. a broken building with the lights left on sagged against the sky, mortally wounded. You'd thought that by enduring

you'd come to peace and reconciliation warm hands. '

28

You come instead to a place where no one's been

and stand in the starless night hands to your face

and no strength left,

lost from man and unknown to God and no way back.

It's then you know

you must make a place for yourself of dry bones and anguish,

wring light from the substance of your will and hope from the bone-dry earth.

It's then you know .

that the only chance you stand is to kindle a star

from the fire of your living breath.

Manifold, 'Vo/. 2, # 4 Elizabeth, P A. 1996