------- - --- --------~--~-~.

\VATERWAYS:

Poetry in the Mainstream

July, 1989

"They find no peg to hang their taunts upon. His soul is like a rock

That bears a front worn smooth To the coarse friction of the sea,

And, unperturbed, he keeps his bitter peace."

\VATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream Volume 10, Number 7 July, 1989

Barbara Fisher & Richard Alan Spiegel --- Co-Editors Thomas Perry - Intern

Contents:

Page Alan Catlin 3--4

Anne Shelley 5-17

Albert Huffstickler 18-20

Susan Packie 21-22

Susan Luther 23-29

S1'. Mary Ann Henn Rose Romano

Arthur Winfield Knight Hilary T'ham

M. Robin Stenkamp Kit Knight

30-33 3<1 35-36 37 38 39-4D

Subscriptions - $20 for 11 issues; Sample copy $2. + .55 postage. Checks payable to Waterways.Pl.Ea.Slf NOTE OUR NEW ADDRESS: 393 ST. PAUL'S AVENUE, STATEN ISLAND NY 10304. Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a SASE.

19m) is devoted to "The Ghetto" by Lela Ridge and the responses by other poets to her words

©1989, Ten Penny Players, Inc,

1

Letter home:

I know about the streets: my children live there.

A BRA VENEW WORLD - Alan Catlin

There are no streets lined with gold. There is gold but only criminals

can have it.

They come home scarred and they speak of tragedy:

the old man

who ran the comer store was stuck upshot when he refused to hand over money. His son also was shot when he attempted to

intervene.

He may die.

It's a hard life here in the city. 4

2

Mother of Exiles

I see her in the harbor, eyes black.

to the sun that sets behind a new horizon, holding a dead torch for homeless people, riding a strange ship that has no use

for people with no home.

On board, we break stale bread and speak of family ritual in an old world that

has rejected us.

On Ellis Island we are humiliated by rude people who don't understand our customs or our languages.

In a few years we may be assimilated

in to a neighborhood not unlike the ghettos we left behind.

The last house on 29th street will be mine. My mother will be holding a white candle in the window after dark.

Sometimes my father sees it and comes home.

5

"-------.

-'h

II.

:MURPHY'S SOLILOQUY a Anne Shelley

Visiting Hours

I.

You'd think it was Macy's fourth floor lingerie

the way they burst from the elevator high heels clicking packages flapping' the way they peer in each room.

Here's my feet sticking out

over there we've got

the original tube-man

but that doesn't stop their swish swish coats. I get two, usually.

The boy and his wife.

He tells me the weather and keeps to the wall she tells me the weather and asks how I feel. I tell how I feel slow, so

gurgle-man can hear ..

Then their turn comes 'round: supper's shriveling in the oven the kid's missing scouts

did you lock the door, dear

the market's down three.

My friend, I swear, gags for me

Bob closes the drapes and turns the sound up.

The end of Bonanza, almost home free, then

she empties her bag on the bed. She says, oh, how careless of me, but she's paying a ransom,

some ransom, junk; brown butts

like ants on the sheet

and she leans down and kisses me real sweet and they go.

She leaves as photograph.

III.

IV.

You've got to laugh the way the place comes undone. Call lights flash, it's Times Square jump

say I need a shot bring me the pan

All I want is to sleep,

good night, moon-man.

7

---------.

BAIL MONEY ~ Anne Shelley

There was this girl, maybe fifteen,

she had this neat red dress and black sling shoes, the kind they had in

Jackson's window?

Well, the judge said put up

fifty dollars since you're out of state

and you could just see she didn't know what to do, that was an awful lot of bread

for her, I mean. There were these two dudes kind of lying in the chairs, like at an opera

or something, she looked back at them

and they nodded, yes, a real small nod

that didn't even make all those chains jiggle so they let her go. We saw her later

in the snack bar.

Her whole lap was covered with sugar she must have had five jelly donuts. She was crying the whole time.

1.

DANCING WITH: BACHM Anne Shelley to J.J.

The stupid regularity of the heavens, where planets dull as commuters

keep catching the same bus,

is the fierce study of learned men.

I rememher you, never closing a door setting kitchens on fire-

Did you slide inside some diagrammed sentence or were you dancing?

9

When we met, our two nicotine clouds had already found each other.

Our companions spoke of jogging. You would have happily

chewed glass

but drank dark beer, instead.

(I see you-

Your prideful face pressed to the window

Papers

on the ice cracking

ice covered papers. Mississippi was in a thaw when your last letter

slapped through my kitchen door But you were dead, already.)

2.

3.

I am two, riding a small boat at an amusement park.

I ring the bell.

Metal tracks (like destiny!) lie below electric water.

4.

r didn't know you had M.S.

I thought you were drunk or clumsy You thought the same of me.

Dropping cigarettes, we talked literature and sex.

Later, much later, I asked you

'How can there be suicide without intention?' You sat across from me, sucking drool,

and smiled.

M.S. stole your tongue, nasty cat.

11

5.

I wait to grow a softening, Joan, like a bear grows winter fur.

I read your Berryman

The Delmores you marked.

12

6.

This, this page keeps you around

keeps the long sentence going we started when we met.

An oaf is turning somersaults, amused by my efforts.

I wonder, am I freezing you, into a frame,

a glass pose your smile, forever frozen, unnatural? How do you choose, without creating a personal ghost? Where's the place for your antique

barrette, your parka? I forget.

13

14

7.

Eventually, ironically, my painter's hands got clumsy, and you, musical drawler, had a mad, flapping tongue.

So, doppleganger, you drove

(like a lunatic)

and I made your phone calls. We were a hydra.

You hadn't an ounce of self pity but pounds of pride,

Yes, dearest, I know why you died.

DANCING WIlli BACH ft Anne Shelley II.

my legs were flying

you were saying asshole asshole pouring

clams diddly diddly into my mouth. Your arms

flying

can dance can can speak can cannot can dance

boo

Roofs steam.

Hey, bo can't talk against the heat streaming sweat.

15

Can't walk diddly diddly hot as Mississippi

why don't you

ghost up a terrible storm?

You and your fucking drama

prima donna

night driver ladies' got style.

Yeh, I'm whining. Crying diddly crying

too.

16

Why the hell did you think

you could waltz your damned crashing exit? All those words

darling bo hey bo

did you smash that scream into a glass and siren melodrama

just to have the last .. Damn you, bo you flounced out

Southern bella donna

you just flew.

You ~~~

left ~~:~~~(

me·, ~I~-:l~ ·~1 -:~

holding the check. "('~iA~~ ~p iI;~1 ,:I~ li./M .

. , ('.' ~/ I.';~ ~.\ Ii ~~%

/., IlIL.;{f-'·

~

17

~--~-- --~--~ -

;'~-. . ~- ._,

THE BIG HUSH ~ Albert Huffstiekler

Everyone believes I'm cynical about psychic phenomena

because I think that Shirley MacLaine sat under a toadstool too long but that's not true. I had two friends who told me

that they were driving along AlA north of West Palm Beach when a flying saucer landed on the beach by the ocean

and something touched them inside and called each of them

by his real name and told them a lot that was going to happen to them. I believed them. Everyone has a real name.

He may not recognize it till he hears it but he has it. It's the unique name that was given to you before birth and just the sound of it opens you up

so that you can receive the information that you need from sources that aren't ordinarily available to you. So when there's something you need to know

18

- -_

~

all you have to do is listen and you'll hear your name called and then the information will be given to you.

And it doesn't have to come from some guy in a turban

or some lady in flowing robes. It doesn't have to come from anybody. But that's a well-kept secret,

because a lot of people would be out of business ifit got out. Which is neither here nor there except for this one point:

If one of those people has information for you, then let them address you first by your real name. If they can't, they have no business with you.

And if they can, then they'll be amazed to discover

that you have as much to tell them as they have to tell you. It's always a two-way street.

And nobody has to teach anybody anything. It's all there inside you.

But that's the biggest secret of all. It's why they have churches.

If they didn't keep God locked in, he'd be all over the place.

19

SECRECY m Albert Huffstichler What took me so long to realize was

that what she talked about

was not what was on her mind.

She invariably sought me out in a crisis

then, often as not,

talked about the weather. Later, I learned

that if I guessed what was going on,

she was willing to discuss it

just as though she'd brought it up herself. It had something to do with

childhood and secrecy" surviving in an adult world. She still had the voice and manner

of a child.

Sometimes I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her

and say, "But you made it.

Look around you. You're here!" But it wouldn't have done any good because somebody didn't make it or there wouldn't have been

all the secrets.

first published in Bristlecone, Carson City, Neuada, vi, No.3, Winter 'S9

21

STITCHES .~ Susan Packie I am not old,

but I am not young, either, The hairs on my head

will never have color again.

I sit trapped in a wheelchair watching her bound down stairs, along halls.

Each year I sign myself into the hospital

and the doctor says

I have lost more nerve cells, although at times I almost imagine I can stand, walk, She stares at me

as if she were expecting something, trying to. give me a message.

-~~~~~~-----------~~~- - ------

--~~,- .

"'~~'W&..- t:.i_

She could be my daughter if 1... but enough of that.

I know what I can and cannot do. I have help-

graduate students who wheel me between office and class,

out to a cab,

home to my wife.

Everyone is very understanding, except her,

that one with the slit down her leg as if someone had opened it up, taken out the bone,

and sewn it up again.

The stitches still show,

My incision is internal, unseen. I cannot be sewn up.

Her eyes rip through my skin

like a knife.

What does she want of me?

I don't even have any thread. Everyone else sympathizes. She waits, needle in hand.

WHEN THE SHADOW RISES IN THE CAN'.ION ~ Susan. Luther

We should love life's long hours of illness

Vi bora alska livets langa timmar av sjukdom and narrow years of longing

oeh tranga ar av langtan

as we do the brief moments when the desert blooms. sasom de korta ogonblick da okneri blommar.

Edith Sodergren, trans. 8tina Katchadourian

23

-~------ - __ --- --- ----- --

, - _ ~.",,-- :J/.,'

palm the dawn as dark

steals over

the soul:

none

may comfort

the long winter's arriving, nothing feed souls

when shadows exact

slumber: then gather the dark close;

1

The light-fingered shadows

of bare maples and oaks draw into fisted shades

of cedar rows,

you hole up

in the hollow cave of silence, lie

down

back tumed

to the world: know

dreaming voices, circle and ring the silence, hush the restless heart

through this troubled sleep

l

2

Three times the valley

has opened

before me

populous with spirits mourning

in the branches of trees

evergreen to needle

the blood: and those

who sounded the branches were the same who brought

and stole the light, whose names are goodness

and mercy:

darkening

the blind chasm oflove

with loss

and retribution, hefting the dark pole

of devotion, fateful wandering, they come

25

- - ------~~- ~ . --------- - ~-- - - -- - --

. 'i_.

~r::._ ..

whispering

fear no evil, fear nothing,

fear us: we are the serpent-staff guarding the father's house.

And the shadow

wrapped itself around me and shouldered me through the valley

though I knew it not: moved

past red and yellow trees whose colors quickly darkened, past

split seconds of sun: passed

26

through conscience, grieving, over frozen rivers

that might have

broken, still could break:

past the righteous elms

that dwell

in this mother-house of air, earth, water, fire, magnolia

blossoms, in the father's lair

of rough declivities

and minarets, pods of berries

ripe and red for seasons' bursting:

spinning a shape that gathered itself out of the shadow

into a narrow longing ofaman

who promised forever

to be my love and enemy,

to walk with me and follow me

all the days of my life.

- ~~-~ -- - - - - --

:Ii,

3

Three times the dark valley

of the shadow

oflife

has opened:

and tribulation said, Death will take you from this sullen valley to the pleasant shade

of green pastures.

But Death answered: how do you know I am not a translation, that my shades are not the deeper intonations

of a darker tongue? Who covets

light from Death

must not t;efuse the shadows woven of the brightness

of this earth.

Then goodness and mercy cried: we're not finished yet!

And the shadow passed over the landscape, with my narrow burden

handed me up into the light.

1

4

If death is translation, should we not study

the living language? --If we must

endure our spirits

to length of days, should we not suffer the shades

of cedars

and pines

when shadows

slash the light?

And if death proves blank

to greet these shapes before they vanish?

Brother of silence,

somnolent

in your winter's cavern, follow

the voice

of your slumber:

after all,

are we not still called

come, take me in oblivion

as you lie sleeping;

I shall watch with you

and lay my hands upon you, piecing with light fingers every ragged dream.

29

-_ - --~ -_ ~~-~----- -- - -

~

PRE GHE'ITO - Sister Mary Ann HeIID.

It's a lifetime ago but it's as now

as when it happened Memories of police coming of packing their belongings to be deported Memories without end of wearing disguises

to hide the yellow star and Jewish features This son a boarder

in his first year of school had grown

He wore the star and saw his mother fix the mezuzah above their door frame and more that he doesn't want to recall of gestapo arriving in 2 cars

the headmaster told him to leave

his belongings and run for the woods as far as he can and NOT to stop

and NEVER say he is Jewish

His father was a tailor their income modest

at home they spoke Yiddish but before sending him

to boarding school

he was told never never to speak Yiddish

He doesn't understand He doesn't ask questions sense that he must not Will it never end?

At the Bar-Mitzvah

his mother covered her eyes sobbing why wasn't she proud of her son? It's difficult to be

a Jew with memories of the Holocaust

MOCKERY ~ Sister Mary Ann Henn

The rabbi leads his followers in a dance while he embraces the Torah .

close to his heart

and the crowd yells

"Jew Dirty Jew"

someone answers "Another view:

Jews aren't a race it's

a belief. Why can't they be

I have that question centered on one God who cares for

and saves the world

be it Jewish Christian

or even atheist in the end it's His decision"

but the crowd yells on "Dirty Jew" and the rabbi leads his followers.

31

- ---- --_--- -- - - - --

~'

NO OTHER PEG a Sister Mary Ann Hetm

The world was so far away Remember your corner?

It was bigger then, than it is

now. I knew my way

around my yard a little

about our neighborhood could find my way to church to school but that's about

all. Sure, we drove to Grandpa's.

farm it was as far away as outer

space seems now. In fact, wasn't

it even further? There were arguments and fights and even wars

in that time but war-was far away. There were no Indians Blacks

or Jews in our town so they called me Jew or Indian because my hair was BLACK

AFTER THE HOLOCAUST - Sister Mary Aim Henri

Her husband stoops inside the doorway. Every morning when he wakes up, he has a hard time getting out of bed.

What he sees out the window scares him. She tries

to slip out early

to fix his favorite breakfast before he gets there.

She blinks away tears watching him limp in.

He doesn't smile just looks at her andsits, They sit

wrapped in meditation for awhile.

When he, marked by seriousness and unkempt hair, reaches

for his spoon with grubby fingers she shakes her head. Her thick braided hair swings back ancI forth against her waist. "Well, a jew

is a jew, isn't it?" How far

have we come?

33

~ --- - -------~ ---

_.

LIKE THE MOTHER ~ Rose Romano This accent, this funny way they spell everything the Italian says,

I listen as I read and cringe wi thou t thinking. They laughed at school where the second generation sent us so we'll know better. They taught us what that kind of talk means--no job, can't give a good job to

someone that ignorant, it has nothing to do with being Italian, it's only because your limited abilities in English indicate you're not too

bright. I learned to speak

English with a Brooklyn

accent. I learned to read

and write. And I

remember

The youngest cousins go around the table from one to the next to the next-

the aunts in black dresses,

the uncles with crooked grins-

and stand between their knees.

I lower my head just a little,

raise my eyes, a trick

to make my big, brown eyes look even bigger, and wait as they chant--Che bella, just like the mother, God bless, hah? And they pinch my cheek until it's sore. I know what that kind of talk means. I remember as

I read and soften without thinking.

I'M SORRY, POP ~ Arthur Winfield Knight

Bob's stayed married Now Marilyn has told Bob

to his second wife she's leaving him,

because he believes and she's asking

Marilyn has helped him for custody of the children

raise his daughters. even though

I believe he's a fool they aren't hers.

because his daughters When Marilyn sees Bob

have grown up thinking she makes a farting sound

it's normal for a wife thru her teeth and says,

to tell her husband "Oh1 it's you,"

he's a latent homosexual; then she goes

normal to hide into their bedroom,

small bottles of liquor eating dinner by herself.

around the house, In a sit com

normal to go into a rage it could almost be funny,

for no reason. but this isn't television.

35

---- JAIl

36

Bob's 12 year old begins crying

when she sees her dad. Bob bends over her bed

asking, "What's wrong, JaNel?

Talk to me,"

but she just lies there crying. "I'm sorry, Pop. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

So is Bob, now.

SALT ~ Hilary Tham

Caesar paid his centurions in salt, ounce

by careful ounce. Leonardo da Vinci painted Judas spilling his at the Last Supper, warning of evil from the angel on his right shoulder.

Jews bring salt to a new house to avert demons, use coarse grains to draw all trace of life

from the meat they eat. At Passover, we dip parsley in salt water, taste again the tears

we shed as slaves in Pithom and Raamses. In desert ten ts, a pinch of the precious crys tal offered on a thumb is a bond of peace

a pledge that blood will stay behind skin.

God heaped whole handfuls - a sea of salt between the houses of Israel and Ishmael. Neither will bend their heads to taste,

they spill blood to slake the salt's white thirst.

M. Robin Stenkamp

We stood near the silence of the ocean

with our words resounding

into the darkness

I wept for me

and you

and all of the pains to be forgotten.

I stood in silence

not knowing what to say or how to say it.

What did you mean when you said

"put me in your shoes

and that is what I am feeling."?

38

Someone has hurt you. I could not say more

or would not

with the silence

of the ocean

around us

and our words resounding into the darkness,

I am sorry I cried

and I am so very, very sorry that I

have

ever

worn

shoes.

=

IIAPPY 141st - Kit Knight

I never fel t the need

or obligation to put flowers on anyone's grave.

Arthur and I feel one should honor the person

while he or she is alive. But sometimes,

we don't get the chance. When we bought the single lavender carnation,

we told the clerk

we were going to put it on Jesse James' grave

fand he asked if ~we were relatives.

Does one have to be blood before honor

can be given? After we left the cemetery I said to Arthur,

J esse's birthday is the fifth of next month, why don't

we give him a birthday party?

I made a carrot cake that, maybe, would have made Jesse puke. But hey, this is the '80s folks.

I made the cake shaped like a tombstone and on it I printed the dates

of his birth and assassination.

39

The kids raided their toy boxes for play guns that everyone had to "register"

in the living room. After dinner

--I used black napkins--

the group watched Tyrone power

playing the lead in the movie Jesse James. All the guests were either teachers or writers.

Or both. I sensed

something was missing;

the blood red balloons were in place right next to the wanted posters.

I was even wearing boots.

Silver ones. But still,

a real touch was achingly absent.

40

\ \

Perhaps no one noticed when I slipped the envelope that contained a twig

from the juniper tree

which shaded Jesse's grave onto my living room mantel.