Waterways:

Poetry in the Mainstream

2000

July
Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream
July 2000

The habit is, for a thoughtless and romantic

youth of each sex to come together,
to see each other for a few times and
under circumstances full of delusion,
and then to vow to each other eternal attachment.

from POLITICAL JUSTICE (1793)

William Godwin
 WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream
Volume 21 Number 7 July, 2000
Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher
Thomas Perry, Admirable Factotum
c o n t e n t s
Joy Hewitt Mann 4-6 Paul Grant 13-14 Kit Knight 21

Melissa Forbes 7 Will Inman 15-16 R. Yurman 22

Bruce W. Niedt 8-9 Herman Slotkin 17 Ida Fasel 23-24

John Grey 10-11 Lyn Lifshin 18 Geoff Stevens 25

Gerald Zipper 12 David Michael Nixon 19-20 Albert Huffstickler 26-27

Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $25 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
©2000, Ten Penny Players Inc.
 William Godwin
1756-1836
3

1805 etching from The Monthly Mirror (vol. 29)

July, 1973 - Joy Hewitt Mann
Now there's some modern motel, brick
Where is that room now, that bed two-storied, hemmed in
that rocked so joyously, those by more and more of the same;
flowered curtains outshining van Gogh, bed burned
that wall-to-wall of molten lava? curtains rotted away
carpet stained and faded in some
Do you remember the blinds, how York Street room
they striped you as you lay — bright
and grey, bright and grey — and the clock . . .
like a psychedelic zebra?
Why did you choose that souvenir?
And the clock? . . .
I held your wrist
a three-foot sunburst rising on Prince not wanting you to go. Where
of Wales, telling us that two is that wrist now? Where did that
was too late, and the office wanting
would be waiting when you returned. go?
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It is the moon - Joy Hewitt Mann

that fits like a white circle on

black paper; or a pupil-
less eye in a dark face.
It is the magnet of a moon
on a dark fridge; a round
hole in a black curtain
that hides us from eternity.

That night it was only a moon, a

cold planet we learned about in school
and the sky was a mother's voice
calling us home.

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We walked linked through the corn
free arms swinging against the shushing leaves
stroking the silken tassels with tingling palms
fingers conscience of being, of
needing something concrete to touch.
Our emotions collided in those
clenched hands; they
copulated with the rhythm of our
walking. We
were as innocent as young whores
in our longing for something beyond the corn,
the sky,
Why I should think of you,
a child, now that I have
children of my own,
I do not know. It is
a perversion more stimulating
than a Chinese egg, round
and white as a full moon pushed
deep into my inner sky. Why
should I think of you, staring
from my bedroom window, stroking
silken tassel with tingling palm
hearing the shush of my own blood

the moon. wondering if it is

the moon?

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 At the End of the Evening
Melissa Forbes
Their eyes of chilly grapes
The smile which at the beginning
Gape
Had bubbled and frothed
As I shake my way
Readily to the surface
Hand over hand over hand
Is now gleaming white
Toward the bathroom door
And tucked in at the corners
Thirty
Like a hospital bed.
Feet
And the arms
Away.
Attached to the hands
Noodling their way between my fingers
Are tiny pickaxes,
Chipping at my crystal-thin veneer.

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 Retrieval - Bruce Niedt

Cleaning his desk in New York, he finds

the old manila envelope,
corners flaking, broken clasp,
psychedelic lettering addressed to himself.
Inside, his collected early works —
he sits and reads
all the pages pounded off
his Smith-Corona
in the days of correction tape,
before the perfect font.

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The paeans to old love come out —
florid verses distended with words
like forever, pledge,
eternal, heart, undying.
He winces, then pictures her
dark waterfall of pressed-straight hair,
brown eyes the genesis of laughter,
legs that would wrap him in glory.
He reads one poem aloud, like an incantation,
like a magus who summons her
through temporal geography,
appearing as though she never turned
her back on him that autumn day,
as dry leaves closing behind her
cackled bitter good-byes.
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Somewhere in Minnesota,
in a house just doused with late spring snow,
she startles, spills tea on her hand as it
flies from a jostled mug.
She shudders, as though a dream suppressed
has tried to flash up through memory.
She mops the puddle with a towel,
flicks brown hair behind her ear,
and returns to read a poem just written
to her husband,
who sits across the round oak table
drinking eternal love.
Green Airport Farewell - John Grey
This is goodbye.
I’m moving to Virginia.
Not too hot, not too cold.
You love those four seasons.
I can stomach
two and a half of them.
Richmond’s close enough to New York
so I can spend an occasional weekend there,
refueling my cultural gas tanks,
and Washington’s just up ninety five aways.
You could never leave New England,
break out in hives
whenever you cross
Rhode Island’s borders
and besides, your family’s here,
that drug, prescribed at birth,
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to be taken regularly for You’ll wipe me from your mind, your heart.
the rest of your life. And to think,
I will make new friends. here we are at the airport,
You will reevaluate the old, you pale as rain,
shake out the ones me juggling tears and suitcases,
who wear my brand. twenty last kisses for
Maybe there’s even a relationship or old time’s sake,
two lying in wait for me poignantly whispering how we’ll
somewhere in the Tidewater. remember each other always,
You could even find something in Providence, practicing for the real thing.
a brownstone yuppie.

Everything new will foam up around us,

insulate us, even act on our molecules
to change what we do, what we think,
who we are.
I’ll forget you ever existed.

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Front Seat of My Old Pontiac - Gerald Zipper
Her profile lit by the glare of a hot street lamp
huddled by the Boardwalk on a Coney Island street
she sat in my old Pontiac
my first true love
crazed by her lushness
breathing salt air shreds from ocean swells
shards of laughter at our ears
neon stabbing at our eyes
Cyclone swerves crazily around sharp turns
bells squeal
I explore the soft crevices
fingers igniting aroused parts
screaming
shouting
This is Forever!
but forever forgets.
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 Villa Sardonicus - Paul Grant
With half a heart engaging half a mind
while the other two halves walk the cliffs
under the guiding light of a cartoon moon,

I’m trying to balance the books — how much will be

the balloon payment on that house I’ve left
unoccupied because I was scared of ghosts—

when I hear her voice in the other room

of our little apartment, talking to Cowboy, the parrot
she inherited when her brother died of the plague.

(He had inherited it from the lover who gave him his
death, who got it from his . . . etc. — with a span of over
a hundred years, Cowboy’s heard a lot of Broadway shows—)

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Cowboy cocks his head and pretends to care
about anything except Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux
cookies coming to him through the bars

of his cage on fingers tempting enough themselves,

except he dimly remembers them being attached
to frightening noise should he scythe down on them.

My task being suddenly loathsome, I pad into the room,

come up behind her, and put my hands on her shoulders.
She shrieks in surprise, and Cowboy,

alarmed out of his dream of jungles, shrieks

the only word he knows, bobbing his beautiful head
in abandon over and over as the room fills up with Nevermore!

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 her soundings - Will Inman
her father declared his family had no
vision, but she could make with her voice
a skein of sound, she would plait the sound
into a rope of reach. it stretched inside
those who listened and wrapped around their
secret knowledge like hungry roots. she would
retrieve that awareness with her plaited
soundings. i never quite understood how she
did it, but i could watch her eyes and tell
when she’d gained from within me what i myself
had forgotten or had never known was there. i
didn’t know how to sound back into her for
what was mine. she would weave that knowing
like a rug of green rushes, would tread that
resonance the way an adept can walk on water.
she’d dance to rhythms i had no ears for. my
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heart moved to a tamer beat. not so with her:
she could take a quiet pulse and swiften it
into a tarantella. with spider’s bite, too,
for weaker listeners.
later, i was able to
tell her no, was strong enough not to listen,
not to allow her sound to enter me, could cut
off her voice like hair, let it fall
between us, such winter leaves. her mouth
would shape curses i refused to hear, i’d
laugh and wade her fallen shadows, they’d
sting my feet, toughen my step. i used her
to grow by, how she swore, her sweated lava
scorching my ankles.
strong enough now to
stand outside her sounds, so, i can
join in her reaching with all things

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 Toe Talk - Herman Slotkin

You said: “You are hateful.”

And I shrivelled to crumpled shards
into my crazed shell.

When we lay down in silence,

wrapped in our private hurts,
the pad of your little toe touched my calf
in velvet slide from knee to ankle.

Toe talk is truer than tongue talk.

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 On the Day
My Mother Eloped
Lyn Lifshin
She will become the hard to find as anything
fled, as if she woman who turns her growing in the park
gave it more thought back on the man she under the cold. The birds
she’d never do it, chose so she couldn’t her daughters try to lure
left with a small be even more tempted closer could be what flew
suitcase in my father’s by the man she could and filled her, something
brother’s car today, not marry, will reach she knows is wild, some
July 1, heading for her girls instead, thing she can’t touch
toward Boston, never two beauties like or keep
supposing what was charms on a bracelet
ahead even in the she will lose. Green
summer would be as that will become her
chilly as the coming favorite color in the last
twilight with snow, weeks of her life will be
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 Above the Carnal Whirl
David Michael Nixon

It had been ten days since Jenny forsook

Thanks to George W. G. Ferris,
carnivore ways, so we’d passed up hot dogs
I finally kissed Jenny and
and eaten candy apples and cotton
Jenny kissed me, as our car
candy. Then, as the wheel lifted us
hung at the top of the wheel.
up and out, down and in, until we rose
The carnival should also get credit,
again and stopped above the carnal whirl,
for the carnies brought the rides to town,
suspended in a heaven of sunset,
where roustabouts got them set up,
all our fears gathered and paused, and we
along with ticket booths, concession stands,
moved together in a first kiss.
games and everything else to set us up.
Below us, carpenters, pickpockets, priests,
ballplayers, dockworkers and accountants
eddied about the grounds — and then
descent.
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In Honeymoon Light - David Michael Nixon
So far, we move across the threshold
without the slightest feeling of darkness.
The sun is all around us, high noon;
beyond the threshold is the skylight—
no shadow anywhere around us.

We do not see the lintel’s shadow

poised on our heads, our shoulders, feet.

first appeared in “Salonika” (September 1996)

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The Greatest Kisser in the Northern Hemisphere - Kit Knight

For more than 20 years

I’ve been telling my husband
we can always make extra money
by putting him
in a booth and charging
a dollar a kiss. We’d have
to keep a bucket of water handy
because his lips can start
a fire. Kissing me,
smiling to beat the angels,
Arthur says, “It’d be
heartbreaking to wake up
without you.”

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 Our Beginnings Cannot
Know Our Ends
R Yurman
On his narrow cot
The first time he touched her
they strained together
he expected the usual
the light in her eyes
brusque ‘stop’
the soft wrap of her arms
a nest he pledge to re-visit
Wet and open more than
any other in his small experience
Beside the car that would
If I give myself to you
take her to the station
they exchanged a quick hand squeeze
she whispered
it can’t be here on the floor —
The glance that flared between them
we need some place private
lit their secret

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 Widow - Ida Fasel

I was forest green, you were city gold—

or was it the other way around?
Our compatible colors made unison phrase
of kindred tones and failed occasions.

In our first house we first said ours.

You made happiness a serious thing,

a grotto of amethysts whose deep
violet blue developed the theme of love
in music of bright and dark variations
enough and more than enough to sustain
the soul silently, passionately listening.

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You filed quarrels away, rare and few
as rocks collected from the moon.
The difference between responsible
and culpable kept tormenting me.
You never complained of airport delays
and undigestible meals. Travel was good.
Risk for you was a daily willing job.
You had a face that would reassure
anyone meeting you at 2 a.m. in a city street—
though you were not likely to be out
at that hour. You had a funny bone,
and it helps me, sorting things out.
You are in my custody now.
Hereinafter has become here. As in the park.
You are the little boy looking down on me
from high on his father’s shoulders:
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Don’t you have a little boy to bring?
And I say, I have you.
All that was possible of the intangible
important to us is possible still,
in the fullness of time as it was
and space open to becoming.
Put to the test, knot in my throat
nothing can be done about. At table
an unset place. Glass to glass.
To be greater than the sum of my parts,
to stretch myself like a Giacometti figure
whose veins no technician can find
in a blood test, but whose head
is somewhat within reach of the ineffable:
Nimble bubbles lead on, and we laugh.
Wow - Geoff Stevens

Wow! Wow! Wow!

Now! Now! Now!
Vow! Vow! V o w !
Row! Row! R o w !

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Filmscript - Albert Huffstickler

It was just like in the movies:

we looked at each once and it had
already happened. We had to run
to find a bed to catch up with
what had already happened and then
the next day and the next it would
be flashing before us and we
would be running along behind
imitating what we had already
seen. It was beautiful. It as
more than beautiful: it was
perfect, just as perfect as the
sight of her waking each morning
to her there in the first light ever.

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No, it was more than perfect: it
was the only way it could be
and it was the way it had been
even before it happened to us.
It was how you are when you’re
in time and beyond it at the
same time. And for a long time,
it was beyond the reach of
anyone else to mar or interfere
with. Only something happened
and then it wasn’t anymore and
it wasn’t as though this one
world had died but all the
words in the universe at once.
And I was standing somewhere
outside of it all wondering
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how a heart that had turned to
ashes could still beat. And
I finally decided that it was
just like in the movies and in
the movies the screen went dark
and you sat there a minute or
a year and then slowly the lights
came up but softly and then
you walked out into the day,
moving very slowly while you
sorted out who you were and
where you were and what part
of it was real after all.
from Cerberus #XXV, 1997, Arcadia FL.
 —2001 THEMES—

January, 2001 (deadline December 1, 2000):

“Last night I had an oboe dream—”
Maxwell Bodenheim, Bringing Jazz

February, 2001 (deadline January 1, 2001):

“Is it a tale you strum?”
Alfred Kreymborg, Improvisation

March, 2001 (deadline February 1, 2001):

“The spring blew trumpets of color;
Her green sang in my brain . . .”
Harry Kemp Blind

April, 2001 (deadline March 1, 2001):

“Piping in silvery thin
Sweet staccato
Of children's laughter”
Lola Ridge The Ghetto

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ISSN 0197-4777

published 11 times a year since 1979

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