SAVMUALVM s = z = a 2 £WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream July, 1997Ww ATERW AY S: Poetry in the Mainstream Volume 18 Number 7 Designed, Edited and Published by Barbara Fisher & Rich Spiegel! Thomas Perry, Assistant ‘Will Inman 9 Fredrick Zydek 10 Johanna Herrick 11-13 Ida Fasel 14 Kit Knight 15-20 Joan Payne Kincaid 1 Terry Thomas 2224 contents H, Edgar Hix 35 Geoff Stevens 26 Karen Kirby 2729 Billie Lou Cantwell 30 David Michael Nixon 31-33 Lyn Lifshin 3438 James Penha 39 July, 197 J. McMedow 40 Gertrude Morris a Susan Snowden 4043 Arthur Winfield Knight 44 Sylvia Manning 4% Mary Winters 46 ‘Albert Huffstickler 4752 ‘Waterways is published 11 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 10304-2127 © 1997, Ten Penny Players Inc.least and most Will Inman at the screened open window, a fly's buzz for an instant is a boy's excited talk with another boy down the alley half a block away. that was this afternoon. tonight radio sounds Heinrich Shiitz chorus from long time since, i see a bush come radiant orange with azalea blooms: a clump of stumpy cactus transformed with incandescent bluewhite flowers. so sound changes sounds, so sound comes sight. cathedral window mandalas through human skulls. least and most in most and least. Tucson, 1 August 1989 from ‘Thirteen Magazine, January 1990The Garden Will Inman I'm walking through the Garden, I'd thought it had been overgrown. Lost. I was wrong. Tt was I who'd gone overgrown with thickets and with streets. I've lived in a world that prefers to alternate between brag and self-pity. Between the two, no room for the Garden. Yes, there are gardens, kempt and unkempt, with small miracles and unaccountable disasters, Now I call them ‘practice gardens.’ But the original Garden had not been created as ornament for a house. The City of God has taken its place and is corrupt with piety and guilt. Bliss happens among a few individuals, but it took me awhile to learn they have discovered 5the Garden alive in themselves. Only two or three know how to share the Garden, have found ways to awaken sight in others to what yet blooms radiant and unblemished in them. In this Garden, I meet with more than one serpent, but not one tempts me with anything I am not. No fruit is forbidden, for every tree has its roots in my soul and, it took me time to learn, in souls of others with kin vision and even, secret and waiting, in souls of those who yet remain blind to their original innocence. There is no Fall of Humankind in this original Garden, Our Fall came elsewhere when we lugged the ancestral bones of an Old Patriarch who taught us to be jealous and to compete for power over. In this original Garden, I can be 6friends with creatures I've never known before now. I can respect their space and be steward of mine, Here, my fellow humans are not drawn apart by skin color, nor by walled territories, nor by pious pew- warmers, nor by those who would sell me what cannot be bought and what was never not already everyone's. Here, I'can see behind their fear and meanness and deep into their original reservoirs of respect and trust and even into the scared blossoms of their love. It can be! T hear myself murmuring. In my solitude, I can reach into that precious Now where ail things are possible. Tucson, Arizona, 2 May 1996 ‘The Maverick Press November 1996no room for how the nest Will Inman all things grow from a common center. center common does not hold geographic or sidereal place. center of genesis opens a whorl of shaping: the whorl moves under all things seen and unseen. the whorl knows, resonates through, every being, wakes every form unique. variations reveal infinite differences down kin shapings, we are each other, yet each is other to each: how that ribbon turns on itself, every stretch a start, every start an original reiteration, the way a flower sucks the bee, how rainbows ride lightning and the red owl swallows a night of hummingbird 8stars, acorns presume to draw time—flesh to oak shapes, and waves kneel whole oceans shoreward in rhythms of tide. i speak till words feather me with insights. i have no room for how the nest crowds singing, but all those birds, all those irises and turtles wear new paths through my thicket beard, what spied with sealed orders on a trek to get lost on, the only way to create being found naked and wailing. Bullhead Magazine, 1996‘The Beautiful Spinner Fredrick Zydek The spider, busy securing ferns to the bark of a tree, dances on her silver thread like a tiny light on a distant sea. She twists new forms among leaves, hems a nest for the ghosts of them that fly slight and airy to her transparencies. Three dragonflies, maddened by the sun, wait laced like roasting quail on a slender plate. At dawn she will suck their sweet and yellowed porridge dry. This avaricious spiriner will weave wind-blown hieroglyphics into the cocoons of the minute souls for whom she weaves the world. She will show me the secret of her straw-like stare until even these lines want to become strands in her web.Rebutting "Erat Hora" Johanna Herrick "Nay, whatever comes one hour was sunlit and the most high gods may not make boast of any better thing than to have watched that hour as it passed” Ezra Pound, Erat Hora If only the good stuff lasted forever, things like ice cream cones, orgasms, luminous moons, Brahms symphonies, those Emersonian interviews with souls who let us be what we inly are. uAnd if only, long ago, I could have kept the shining light of the fireflies I tried to capture forever on sultry Midwest summer nights, my child's body sweating in a frenzy of anticipation. This is how I tried to do it, the recipe for eternal light, I thought: Kill the firefly at the exact moment of immolation (does it die to the splendor of an orgasm?) remove the light organ of the insect; attach it with grass to my finger as the gold ring of the most magnificent princess; admire it unceasingly. But always, always, it lost its luminescence, and I'd grow bored...I mean, what happened to the real light, the momentary spark, the zest that for an instant also lit my desert child's heart? Hope and light turned to paltry insect body parts, Still the story of my more down days. Old Ezra Pound was satisfied with one sunlit hour; not me, not then, not now. I want eternal and everlasting joy; I quest after the ultimate sensation. Perhaps the firefly was the lucky one.Glow-Worm Ida Fasel All because : a glow-worm one moment in the dark field rouses me to a light greater than 22 xenon lamps with 4,220,000,000 candlepower intensity illuminating Niagara Falls for the tourist's sight, like a private music, an issue of mind takes form from nature, carries me through to the full nature of all being, to pure delight. from Amphora Full of Light. 4Rachel Cooke, 186: Honor Beyond Calculation Kit Knight For 29 years I've followed aman, who, like me, is proud to bea Virginian, We met at one fort and got married at another. Like my father, Philip is also married tothe U.S. army. Our children were born and raised in forts all through the west, My Flora married the finest calvary officer in the South; Jeb Stuart is also from Virginia and also married to the army. But he didn't hesitate a second when Virginia left the union. Nor did my son. They were going to fight for Southern rights. High command knew its Southern officers would need something "greater than courage to lead troops to invade their homes and shoottheir brothers, so will feel betrayed if Philip the army offered rebels doesn't "go South.” And others commands in California~ will call him a traitor. With far from the sounds honor beyond calculation, of battle. We'd only hear I pray Flora will hear my heart, the whisperings and tuggings of our hearts. I followed Philip to Utah and listened to my husband--wrapped in his overcoat and grief say, "It's easy to know what to think but so hard to know what to do." His family, my family, and the four children I birthedFlora Stuart, 1862: Blood & Passion Kit Knight All the South calls my husband "a plumed knight." General Lee calls my husband "the eyes of the Confederate Army." Jeb led 1200 men on horseback and circled the entire Union Army in three days, The raid embarrassed federal command and brought Lee valuable information. My father, at one point during the assault, was only four miles behind leading Yankees in pursuit of Jeb's raiders. It's cruel that my husband's glory was also my father's defeat. Only a few Southern officers remained loyal to the union when the War began. My dad, who is dying of grief and a broken heart, kept his word to the U.S. Army. For 29 years Philip has kept his word and even the passions of a divided country 1]and the passions of his divided family can't force him. Everyone~ but me--was shocked and angry when Philip didn't "go South." Years ago, Jeb named our son Philip because there is much to admire in my dad. Now~in a voice fierce enough to break a fist— Jeb swears, "No son of mine will ever carry the name ofa traitor." This War makes me bleed. There were other raids, other glories. My brother rides with Jeb. As awife I'm proud. Asa daughter I'ma rebel. Asa sister I'mstilla rebel. And as a mother I must change my baby's name.Mary Ann Booth, 1865, ‘The Murderer's Mother Kit Knight ‘Whenever I'm in town people point at me and shout, "There she is, the murderer's mother." I can almost touch the hatred flaring at me from every corner. My youngest son shot President ‘Lincoln. John said he did it for the South and shouted, 19in Latin, "Thus to tyrants," as he jumped onto the stage and surged forward with a bowie knife. John slashed two men who tried to stop him. My favorite child broke a lower leg bone in that 12 foot leap. Drama runs in the family; five of my six children make their living~as does their father—in the theater. ‘My husband's middle name is Brutus. Many historians consider Caesar to have been a tyrant and Brutus ahero, Another of my sons really is a hero, but my neighbors won't believe a Booth actually saved a Lincoln. Several months before the assassination my Edwin pulled Robert Lincoln to safety before the train moved. ‘The President's son attended his father's funeral only because a Booth saved his life.Signals Joan Payne Kincaid Te is good to have Delphiniums on the mind again and Portulaca and all che plants you taught me to name though your signal is missing and there is no way to return you, Mother ie is good to have them back, the flowers, birds and insects that left with the last frost; Crickets will be starting, and Katydids and by June, the most exciting ones you called LIGHTNING BUGS Will silver-shoot the night and always as each taught being reappears Iam signaled to the early days, to your gifts of awareness. 2Crystal, pistol bright on right days, playing sprays, bullets into black corners. Mourners may yearn for midnight mass, but I pass my light in solar flares; don't care for eclipses, sunspots or clouds— crowd to windows Sun Catcher Terry Thomas like a frantic flyer, buying time till the glow fades in the growing dark.rt, Cupid in the Potting Shed ‘Terry Thomas Found an arrow through my peat moss — little one, phallic, pinned into old mulch. And these tiny tracks -- like some baby midget running amuck (chmuck silly, if you ask me). Oh, and I did see these little hearts strewn about like pesky dandelions, except they were only sprouting old snail poop. I stooped, peeked under the herb bench - nope, nothing but rabbit turds and bits of colored shells (eggs). I straightened, then felt something hit my leg -- like a pin prick (made me a little sick), but then I decided to look up Milly, -my neighbor, and discuss my green thumb. 3Maybe Poetry Terry Thomas ‘Maybe if I widened my sighs, And maybe if I siphoned my whys, wet my sound Thesaurus tongue, set my wound Taurus tongue, fingered the watch fob sheath, I could... sheathed she steht finger, I could . (insert something here). insert something here). ‘Maybe if I promised payment, bet my sound-alike soul, lingered over flower beds, beneath, I could... insert something here). Maybe if Grace faced me, let me sound my coy chord, tinkered with my inspiration, all teeth, I could. . (insere something here).The Beekeeper H. Edgar Hix Whoever he cannot touch he stores in his apiary, feeding her his pollen and stealing her honey. He loves fresh honey in the morning ona hot roll with cut flowers in a bud vase. "Eat local honey and you'll never get hay fever.” He's not allergic to anything. His eyes never water. In the afternoon, he puts on his protective suit and stands among the hives, his smoke in his hand, or else he's on his knees among his flowers, weeding, wearing yellow gloves and swatting away the occasional bee. 5Fire Fly Geoff Stevens Stars of the night pinpoint distances in the black expanse of universe, map out the awesome extent of space. Ideas are similar, fire-flying in thought's infinity, minute sparks of light in a dark land of opportunity.Logic Karen Kirby Her nerve pills they called them in hushed tones when we kids were present. Grandma was always so fragile and frail not quite sick but never really well. A tiny timid doll-like woman her pale skin papery as a delicate flower when we kissed her powdery cheek. ‘We tip toed around her sensitive edges our childish enthusiasms put on hold. Nervous breakdown Mom clucked, folding protective wings around her mother-child. qGrandpa took over all the chores shopping, meals, even laundry fussing as if she were still his blushing helpless bride. ‘Then Grandma got cancer. ‘A year to live Mom sobbed. ‘We must all pray for her very hard. ‘We'd not been asked to pray before beyond the old standbys now I lay me down and our father who art so I prayed with all my childish heart dear God please don't let my Grandma die. For months I prayed then a miracle happened even her doctors couldn't explain. 28‘The cancer was gone and my Grandma lived on and on. But that very same year my Grandpa died suddenly. So I figured God had made a deal. Tnever quite forgave God or Grandma. Ididn't pray again after that.Firm Moments in Flight Billie Lou Cantwell Black dots . , Black dom ld like the black angus in that field fade though the plane climbs foam’ and the cattle vanish wo we will remember a moment i hat add confuses the patch of lake eae techs fe with the patch of sky and enriches a soul. like love can spin reason until certain constants confirm directionFireflies Remember Me David Michael Nixon Fireflies remember me: I am the dense being just beyond the flickering, fevered, hot light. xFeel the Song Vibrate David Michael Nixon Too far from the fire to feel the warmth spreading throughout your body, you sit back on your haunches as though the flames were right in your face and feel the song vibrate in the air of the circle, your ear, your mind, your body; finally you join the chorus and the song throbs from your mouth, beats with its other voices, making one being in the air.Picking With Aunt Janet David Michael Nixon. ‘When I was a boy, Aunt Janet was Harry Truman and I was Margaret as we picked raspberries in the back patch. Now Harry is dead and Margaret writes murder mysteries. The berries are gone; the house an office for lawyers. Aunt Janet became the librarian. She brought home books by Margaret Truman and ordered poetry books for me. Now Aunt Janet is dead; I'm still writing these poems; and all over Lockport, people are reading books she helped them pick. 3Amtrak to Schenectady Lyn Lifshin Is this seat taken? a slight accent, honey skin, tho I wanted to stretch out, with the car filling up, I smile No and she moved, dancer-easy to the fawn velvet, I'm Therese, I'm travelling with my busband, Isn't i cilly, im'titcold? She grins, 25 maybe, pretty, wanting to please unlike the man in front with a boom box slithering out even swith plugs, or the woman stinking of garlic. She was like a tulip, yellow petals, not the red that might attack. I watch mallards on the Hudson as she curls into her slimness. We're going north, maybe Niagara Falls she says, Lforgot. My husband has my ticket. Rochester. Ok. 1 picture a man who, like her, could have stepped out of that early film about young women and men in Bali, water spirits with jet sleek hair, a lei of plumeria 4and orchids when an elderly man, balding, plump, maybe 65 or 70 saunters up the aisle and Therese says proudly, My husband. And I'm suddenly wrapped in his smile, wondering if this is a mail order bride, imagine ads of young beauties with cherry blossoms in their hair begging to be imported, swaying in a grass skirt under a blood papaya moon as the buyer sips Tequila Sunrises on a balcony, flips a wad of bills. We're not the same age you can see he laughs and I have my clue, ask how they met. A long story. I retired from prychology and after 4 few years of golf and sitting in the country club, I got bored, Therese is watching his mouth move, as if trying to catch the exact words.So I went t0 Beijing, tbe islands, 1 think of tropical spots with the geishas like swaying girls, the balmy winds, gauze. Her breasts are gauze, her nipples are plums thru and he says, The Philippines. I'm not surprised, see Therese in a take out drive thru, He's ordering pineapple drinks six times a day and then he asks. her, wraps her in silk, pulls her back after 2 trips to San Diego and I'm wishing Albany didn't come up so soon, that I'd hear more of this novel than I'll be 3sAlbany didn't come up so soon, that I'd hear more of this novel than I'll be getting, Fobn, get me a drink, she grins, kitten-like, wriggling ftom sleep and he pulls out some bills for her to go but she doesn’t seem to want to leave him near me. Well both gohe nods and by the time they're back, I only know she doesn't miss Manilla, she's happy they're moving to a place where it’s easier to shop. She loves it warm. Washington was ok but too much walking. I wonder if he’s 70, if they'll have a child she'll never teach the Filipino language to who'll get into Stanford or UCLA on a football scholarship, paler than Therese; but with her enormous black lake eyes, dark as the goddess Pele's. Goodby, it was and I get off in downtown Schenectady, still hours later sure I can smell the flowers I've seen in books, the ginger torch fire, pikake, camellia and spicy rose ginger on my black velvet in cold mist.The Mad Girl Thinks of the Eleven Years Ago January Lyn Lifshin ‘When sleet and wet snow started pines and branches snapping and pulling wires down and even in sun the rooms were already cold, she put the jogging shirt, after shovelling the stairs, from a most unlikely lover near the fireplace to dry, smelled the scorch of it burning as some of his words had when she began to find him too difficult and dull. Wrapping in a quilt with the burning cherry, enough wood for weeks and with no electricity, no way to type, she took the last of the hot water for hot chocolate and curled up to read as if she was camping in the trees. In the wild light, junipers eyand maples and walnuts pressing glass, bringing the outside in- side, made it seem she was winter camping, half dreaming in leaves until the radio jolted her back with the knife of a special bulletin, a we are at Cape Kennedy exploding, the lift off smooth and then the hush, the replay of the moments after on battery radio, numbing like the cold. Over and over as she read the mail, waited for someone to bring hot tea in a thermos, a flashlight like a beacon to glow into the night as she curled under 7 quilts with the cat, the radio like breath, the all night talk jock moving into her ear as less than 4 months later he actually would 38Eve James Penha I put the disk on the pyramid's point and play it lightly for the evening's eyes: millions on the street stop to see tongues of fire spit: a theater for the night. 39es" _—OS ‘Tinkerbell J.McMedow She draws her mechanical smile, a row of dents, "Come here loverboy. Tam the night's fangs, che light’s impostor, the only leader till dawn.” Fire dictates the darkness, flames her evil spectacle wings. spme call her lightning bug; some whisper firefly; so the world divides. The glowing conclusion arrives. Trip her apart and throw her in my collection KA-BOOM Eyes and ears and wings and things ..- an exploding fly. She illuminates the corridors of my mind my body. "Now can your Fire fly?" 40Old Love's Sweet Song Gertrude Morris ‘The first time they were naked, Once they lay in a dry culvert by lamplight she was ivory-white, smelling of snails and graves; he was brown as buckwheat honey. they danced in a soft rain That night they did the good hard work; in a grove's neon green, they were acrobats of a small circus, (bulls bobbing on the river saw them.) daring stunts no one had before. In old movies a sudden wind ‘They were naked in their skin riffles the pages of a calendar, under a sun that clothed them old lovers are silvered over, in heat that stopped time. but wise old hands remember. 4l‘Twilight Palette Susan Snowden Two silver slips of cloud meet, then part to make way for the celestial deposit: a giant, Chinese-red token of sun, dropped in the slot, Nature's pay-off for a trip to the pier. Granny's Zebco clicks; she jerks the old rod, clucks at her failure to snag the elusive bream, whose yellow eyes glint beneath the murky surface. An orange cat licks hungrily at fish blood and shrimp shells on gray weathered dock planks. aBeyond the estuary black skimmers and gulls dip and plunge into glassy Topsail Sound, while twenty miles out the tourmaline Gulf Stream band flashes neon in fading light. 4BRichard Brautigan at Narsi's Hofbrau Arthur Winfield Knight I saw you, Richard Brautigan, tied in a ponytail. standing in line at Narsi's Hofbrau You didn't seem much older at the Coddingtown Mall. than you did on the cover You were wearing a baseball cap of The Tokyo-Montana Express, from the Bodega Bay but your shoulders were slumped. Volunteer Fire Department, Inoticed you had a tattered copy and you ordered a meat loaf sandwich of The Abortion in your back pocket with coffee and Lay's potato chips. when I walked by your table. You were wearing dark glasses I said, "Nice book," and you smiled. as if you were Elvis incognito in Upper Michigan, but I recognized you instantly, your thinning hair December 27, 1993‘Will who is lucid Sylvia Manning (for Will Inman, Arizona poet) Will who is lucid with Love's light in spite of all and whatever in our world today deserves not even Darkness as grand noun for its ubiquitous ugliness Writes poetry to shade us from bright poverty. Cognizant of old and odd brave struggles against misuse of might (as we used to put it: “having fought the good fight,") He writes now with his arms around the tree-inside-self. Ear to bark, listening to wooden rings of concentricity, he transcribes. Jack Rabbit, a literary review (Eagle Pass, TX); Vol. 9, ‘The Maverick Press, April 1996. 45I'd Like to Banish Every Mary Winters bit of plastic from my life exchange it for old-fashioned stuff life would be mellow an arcadia all lovely big trees a low stone vine-covered cottage no light but firelight Without any plastic I'd be full of good humor never ina hurry gracious and calm a friend to my foes I'd scour the flea market for lace before it became acetate leather before it became vinyl I'd replace and replace and replace ... sometimes the antique gives me the creeps the bonnet a ghost wants back if it's broken, abandoned could I be infected? the old silvered mirror fit for a corpse 46temptation Albert Huffstickler she keeps buzzing around me, flitting toward me then backing off. i'm flower to her bee, or say, agrain of sand inside her shell and she can't decide if i'm the imakings of apearl Crimson Leer or just another 3rd Issue 1996 raw spot. Fabius, NY 47By The Cigarette's Glow or Why Crazy People Smoke Albert Huffstickler Down here where there's no time and it's always dark we light cigarettes and the glow warms us and we see each other as through a glass darkly and watch the ash grow and suck time into our lungs. It warms us. Down here where no one knows us, we have to know ourselves and to do that we have to have something other. That other is the cigarette patiently 48making its way down the length of the tube, glowing softly till it's all ash @s we are all ash) and we know each other in our most basic state while ash glow fades and vanishes as we have faded and vanished from our rightful place. Down here where time is of the essence because it's so very scarce. If we had time, we would walk out into it and take jobs and fall in love and have children. We would talk and talk about the 49things that matter. But there isno time. There is only the lightless dark and a dread deeper than bone. And so we light another cigarette and for a moment feel the glow around us and are safe in time and warm with the knowledge that we can almost function. ‘And then slowly the ash creeps toward the filter and the light dims and finally then we're extinguished, cast off and there's no time, none at all here in the lightless dark. Or 50if there is time, there's time only to be crazy. from Fearless Lancaster, PA st