Waterways:

Poetry in the Mainstream

2000

March
Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream
March 2000

Punishment is a specious name,

but it is in reality nothing more
than force put upon one being
by another who happens to be stronger.

from POLITICAL JUSTICE (1793)

William Godwin
 WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream
Volume 21 Number 3 March, 2000
Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher
Thomas Perry, Assistant
c o n t e n t s
Ida Fasel 4-6
Terry Thomas 7
Joanne Seltzer 8
Matt Dennison 9
Will Inman 10-14
Albert Huffstickler 15-20
Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $25 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (includes
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Waterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127
© 2000, Ten Penny Players Inc.
William Godwin
1756-1836

detail from a portrait by Henry William Pickersgill

 Education of a Tourist - Ida Fasel

New York to Cairo. Uneventful flight.

Spectacular view of pyramids and Sphinx from hotel. Time
conflates, bunches past and present. I lose track of where
and when I am.
Ponder the mysteries of the Great Pyramid, “house of
eternity,” according to the Guide. Is eternity to be
measured not by quality, only by magnificences in space-time?
Picture taken standing between paws of the Sphinx.
Back off to snap the “stoney, mysterious smile that hints
of ancient long-lost secrets.” That smile is a one-stroke
poem like a Zen ink-trace spontaneous after study,
uncorrected after brushed. But she has no secrets to give
away. Only the world-weary wisdom of desire and decay.
At the Museum of Antiquities “crystal eyes stare into
eternity.” Numerically, eternity is a pay-for-view, every
augenblick. Hot, weary, regaled with Sound and Light.
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 At the oldest “souk” in the city almost overcome by
“fragrant perfumes and exotic spices,” in other words, smells.
Everywhere cheap miniatures of the Sphinx still holding up
things stood for by things by far they are not. In the
evening board our Nile vessel.
Off to the “City of Light.” Cruising again. Massive
temples, tombs of kings, tombs of queens, tombs of sacred
bulls, ram-headed crocodile gods. More Sound and Light.
Lavish farewell dinner. Egyptian cuisine, belly dancers,
whirling dervishes “lest you forget the Land of Eternity.”
On the way to the plane a fellah kicking cursing beating
his donkey. What is eternity but a perpetual catching up
with what’s always one step ahead, the heart never running
out of human warmth? No, I won’t forget. A donkey took me up
the steep path to the tombs of Beni Hasan. The lowly loyal eyes.

5
Outlook for the Millennium - Ida Fasel

1. Open-Backed 3. Prayer

Six words If I
in full review cannot be wise,
of the century just let me be clear and strong,
zeroed out: so much, so little, be what I can be like a seed:
so far. more than

2. Prophetic merely
coming to life,
A small surviving bird and frost,
mouse shall lead us but developing a fine full
into the wilderness blossom.
ahead and bring us many
options.

6
 Close Cover Before Striking
Terry Thomas

I still dream about my father— for the blow. When I got

some good ones: older I didn’t know if there
reluctant pitch and catch, was a change of behavior—
his staccato laugh at a joke; his or mine—
some bad: but I guess I did
pretending to run over me fine on firming up for everything—
with a racing engine, including my heart.
the overall dread at Now he’s a part of my near
his faltering step. and far past; maybe now,
Then the glassy stare at last, I can open up more,
just above my head at least in my dreams.
and I would firm my
jaw, back and butt

7
 Bedtime Story - Joanne Seltzer

I am a mouse. My husband is a cat.

He draws me close and strokes me with his paw.
Underneath the touch that seems like velvet
lurks a claw. How could there not be a claw?
Not only does the rhyme demand a claw,
the relationship demands one. “Bad wife,”
you say, “have you no sense of loyalty?”
No, none at all. In truth, I hate my life.
“You’d better learn to like or lump your life.”
Who spoke those bitter words? I can’t decide
which bad choice will hurt the least. What if
both of us are thinking that suicide
can substitute for murder? O dear God,
why did you make me small and terrified?

8
 the wall - matt dennison
She screams as you know
all night long
and bangs on the wall
and I’m sorry it’s your wall
but it’s my wall too
and there are stains
where my hands
have rested.
Across the wall
you might get
the wrong impression
but she’s crazy deaf from
twenty years in the bed
and it’s the meanness
that outlives us all.
I imagine your wall doesn’t hold
as much slack grey hate
as this rot-paper wall
has swoll’d up with
through the years
while I walk up and down asking
can I take it no longer
halting
to look
at the hand
on the heavy black skillet
with the same old grease
and the same old flour
9
and wonder
at the price and the worth
of endurance with no one left
to grieve my going and how
it might have been
if it ever could have been.
The funeral’s Tuesday and it’s
going to be so quiet
for all of us.
 recognitions - Will Inman

mercy. i walk between tall waves slaves with no master but time
and fire, earth shakes, under. wind inhabit us against our wanting.
roars dervish down this open stretch. rare instants they’ll sing our own tune,
hanh! all these and none of these. open their eyes naked in sun

just time. time works the great jaws. such times are time true blest—
time picks those teeth between then time forgets to grind. future
feedings. time erodes our eyes begs an instant from now. we dance
as we watch. time and the dark sisters dark sisters and brothers turn

dark sisters and brothers. how rainbows on spits of ribs

hard they work in, on, at us, around fires of our hot hearts.
grinding us in our own joints, so. time eats what wordless blessing,
try to see them, they won’t look up. what dark god stands at fire and smiles

from Abraxas 37
10
 the last trek - Will Inman

i walk every day from this place sparse of trees

toward a deepening forest thick with living time
i walk in to those green shadows, those black
crypts under bent branches, i walk into the fresh
dark of my mother out of which i first woke into
blue sky nakeder than my own young flesh.
but now,
on the far side of the woods, i come out upon
barrens, a sand place without grass or grace,
stark with the skeleton of god, not a bird, not a
beetle, land bereft of water, with all its past,
its very breathing time, drained away, leaving no
root to sprout a future from, crystal grains in
swarms, jewels chock bright with lostness, good
only for gizzards of birds, though naught winged
ever approaches this sweep of gone, save for
buzzards, except to crouch an instant, to turn
11
dark eyes rapid in all directions, to give one
terrible chirp, then to fly away as if winged sharp
with shining shadows.
i stand forest edge and look.
is this where i’m to meet my final escort? across
this dread dead place?
from back in deep woods, i
hear a thrush-call. and now all the high foliage,
vines, thickets, great branches, orchid together
with fungus — swarm around me with rhythms that
once surged and sounded where only sand lives now
its dry death. these green and wooded things
coil with that thrush-call in through my ears.
i’m as old as birds, as young as sky, no, not even
stars can bank their orbits into the pores of my
tongue at this last late edge of sand
13 February 1995
from The Lucid Stone #21, Spring 2000

12
Spider Woman, a Language of Distance - Will Inman

Have you studied the language of Spider Woman?

She makes messages in the strands of her web.
She does not engage with letters or syllables,
ciphers or runes or marks: she writes by stretches
and connectings, by shinings and shadows, her
message cannot be read, they communicates by
fastening.
when you run into her web, she
strengthens her message by wrapping it over
and over around you the way a composer can
repeat the same measure again and again till
you feel trapped in the sound.

Spider Woman
is not so concerned with harmony except at times
when she designs her web. She wants you to feel
welcome to enter her pattern. In fact, she wants
you to enter her: if her message gets you, she
13
will suck your juices. Her embrace is oral
but rarely sexual.
Stand back: her nearness
shivers rhythms of distance: the closer you are
to her, the further you are from yourself.
Some
communions can best be known by a healthy respect
for enough space. Though I keep my distance, I
don’t disturb the spiders in my windows: they
entertain uninvited flies and mosquitoes.
Let her
be herself while you take the long way around.

Down her web, she hangs sucked-dry hulls like

trophies. One of them will be what’s left of her
latest mate. These are the strongest messages
in her web, her true punctuation, her ceaseless
finale.
Are there other ways to use her languages?
from Red Owl, Spring 1999
14
 Manpower 2 - Albert Huffstickler

Al says, laughing, “Hell, I was in jail so long, when somebody says, ‘Let’s have a cup of coffee,’ I start
looking around for a roll of toilet paper to build a bomb with,” a bomb being a small fire you build in a
can out of toilet paper to warm your coffee—or you can make toast by spearing your bread on a
piece of coat hanger. They didn’t feed them but twice a day—morning and noon—so they had to hold
a little back for supper.
DWI, Al explained. Picked up in Columbia drunk in a lawyer’s car that he’d gotten from his wife,
“shacked up drunk for a week.” Long, dark-haired, scoop faced. “I wouldn’t have gotten picked up if
I hadn’t been following that State Patrol car.”
“Why were you following it?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Passed him on the shoulder finally and he come after me. I spent 38 days there.
I tried to call some people in Austin and couldn’t get ‘em. Two weeks later, they let me use the
phone again.”—laughing—”Then they turned me over to the Travis County and I did 15 days there.
The lawyer tried to claim I stole the car but his wife called the District Attorney and told him the
truth and the District Attorney said, ‘Hell, I’m not taking this case to court,’ and threw it out.”

15
He was back with an old girlfriend last night—a dopehead but she’s been straight for a year—hard
stuff. Now she’s working at Austin State Hospital, Alcoholic Ward.
“She’s been in Bellview and everywhere. Now she’s lecturing at clubs and hospitals. Me, I guess I’ll
get me another job painting. I never thought I’d go back to painting. Ain’t done it in over a year.”
I told him about one day when I went down to the San Jacinto day labor office broke and this
deputy constable came in and asked if anybody wanted to move some furniture. Me and some other
guys said yes, so he put us in his car and drove us out into the country and stopped in front of a lit-
tle shanty where a black woman had locked herself and her children inside. The constable was serv-
ing an eviction notice and we were supposed to move her furniture out into the front yard. But she
wouldn’t open the door and he couldn’t break in and take her because of the children.
He had to get special authority from the judge to take the children and turn them over to welfare.
So actually we didn’t do anything but sit there in the car and listen while the constable argued with
the woman till he got tired and then came back to the car looking disgruntled and guilty. By then, I’d
already decided that I wasn’t going to do it and so had the others. But the decision wasn’t necessary
because the constable had to go find the judge first, so he drove us back to the day labor office and
paid us for an hour and a half. “But here I was, busted myself, and supposed to keep going by throw-
ing some old woman out of her house.”
16
We laughed.
The two of us working at the furniture factory the day before, watching the cheap furniture roll off
the assembly line. A dull job. They’d let us go at noon because there was nothing to do.
And now, this morning slow, not much doing.
“Nine o’clock,” says Al. “Hell, we’re not going to get out,” picking up the lunch packed for him at the
Baptist Mission where he’s staying for fifteen dollars a week, room and board.”
“See you tomorrow,” All says laughing.
“Yeh, see you tomorrow,” I say.
Tomorrow at Manpower.

October 22, 1970

from Cerberus XXVII, Arcadia FL 1999

17
 Credo - Albert Huffstickler

We have come upon this place of stones,

walking silently, heads down.
There is no place else in sight and we are very tired.
We will build here.
We will see what can be fashioned
of stone and the soul’s labor.
We will make dwellings here and live out our lives.
We will fashion of this place a haven
so that, in times to come, men will say,
“They came to this place and found nothing but stone
and they made the stones blossom.”

from Rustic Rub, Number Nine, 1998, North Yorkshire, England

18
 Sometimes Things Get Better Before They Get Worse
And Sometimes They Get Worse Before They Get Better
Albert Huffstickler

Call me the night

you feel so alone
your skin won’t stay on
and your feet
walk up the wall and disappear
while you lie there
with a halo of dust
around your head
waiting for the clock to tick
but it’s gone silent on you too.
Call me the night
you can’t feel your hands
on your body
because one of you has vanished.
19
Call me when the night
is longer than
your previous lifetime
and you can count the stars
in your heavens
on one finger,
when you close your eyes
and the face you
see before you is your own
staring back at you
in horror.
Call me when
your chickens have all
come home to roost
and the roost is full
and they’re still coming.
20
Call me when
you can’t wait any longer
and know it’s too late
anyway and the phone
curls on your bed stand
like a cobra
daring you to touch it.
Call me in that voice
I know so well
while the operator chants,
“Long distance please
from Hell.”
Jan. 31, 1993
from The Black Clove Tradesman #5
Syracuse, NY 1998
ISSN 0197-4777

published 11 times a year since 1979

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