Waterways:

Poetry in the Mainstream

2000

September
Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream
September 2000

. . . when poverty is more disgraceful

than even vice, is not morality
cut to the quick?

from THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN (1792)

Mary Wollstonecraft
 WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream
Volume 21 Number 8 September, 2000
Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher
Thomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

c o n t e n t s
Will Inman 4-7 Jean Sellmeyer Smith 17 R Yurman 22

David Michael Nixon 8 Terry Thomas 18 Ida Fasel 23

Joy Hewitt Mann 9-10 Susan Snowden 19 Herman Slotkin 24-25

Lyn Lifshin 11-15 Robert L Brimm 20 Albert Huffstickler 26-28

Don Winter 16 Matt Dennison 21

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Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797
Enough Hope for the Down - Will Inman
Mass Poverty is necessary to keep pay
low.
When more are unemployed, jobs are rare
and need less wages to keep workers
in line. Just keep
enough ready money
to buy goods and maintain profits.
The Free
Market is not free and is not even a market
for everyone. Economic elements must be
kept in balance, and it’s a good thing
to ensure sufficient numbers stay within
a table’s stretch of starvation.
So do not
send to ask whose stomach is swole, it is
swole for thee if you’re one of God’s
blest exploiters.
4
 Be kind to those down
trodden; feed them just enough to blind
their eyes.
If they’re ungrateful enough
to stand up for themselves, be quick
to remind them about turning the other
cheek — in fact, all four cheeks.
They
may contend that, in standing up for
themselves, they’re actually defending
fairness for everyone.
Too bad they can’t
see fairness has nothing to do with Free
Market success and decent living. Assure
them that patience will earn them rewards
in a later life.

7 September 1999, Tucson

5
 Hymn of Untouchables - Will Inman

call not untouchable what god has made clean:

these rags wrap sacred incarnations
this child’s nakedness is sky come plain
in human flesh. sing precious life’s elation.

lotus blooms open eyes, green stem long down mud,

out of dark rise floating rounded leaves
out of dark these children blossom new faces of god:
these flowers fall, now sun-dance three retrieves.

reach out to stroke these cursed creatures’ skin,

how fingers scorch against the rotten feel
of precious lives, of nobles’ karmic sin.
cobra turned round inward, fathoms wrong with real.

6
lift up these eyes, raise high these broken hands,
not begging, no! affirming sacred presence here
every child begot unique, god willing minds
walking waters of impossibles steep with fear

sound the trumpets of jeweled rajah, chief:

welcome the denied ones inside the palace gate:
lift every voice to heal the ages’ grief
and sing how raptures end this longest wait!

25 December 1999
7
 David Michael Nixon

Hunger is coming,
rattling its loose teeth like black
castanets— listen.

8
In-House Special - Joy Hewitt Mann

His hunger is organized:

at night he sleeps, knees drawn in tight
to touch his forehead, feet
in steel-toed boots, fingers
curled in fetal protection,
his body accustomed so that even awake
he carries night with him, snail-like; days
he hunts the friendlies and the guilties
gathering spare change from their dead faces;
evenings he builds architectural wonders
— quarters, dimes, nickels, loonies —
on the counter of the L.C.B.O.
tells the clerk, “Give me the most for my money”
and always gets a 2 litre jug of Catawba Red
and no change.
9
He dines along the George Street alley, dumpsters
line up like a buffet ‚— seafood, Italian, Greek —
organizing his dining pleasure,
washed down with a fine red wine;
then sleeps,
curled tight around his bulging stomach,
just before the rats
come out to feed.

10
 In One Shop - Lyn Lifshin

the women don’t look at you, they

are absorbed in weighing potatoes
on a scale. Then you see a small
mirror on the wall is covered with
a kerchief. This house is in mourning.
That is why you are not greeted at
the door. That is why there is no talk
of the business that brought you here.
You wonder, where are the men? How
do their women know the rites of
mourning? They’ve had time and
opportunity enough to learn by heart.
There were seven of them when they
came to the ghetto, the father, the mother,

11
four sons and a daughter in law. In the
city they had four rooms and a dry goods
store. They were among the first to move
to the ghetto during the “planned resettle-
ment.” The oldest son, the one who was
married, was the first to die. “He was too
gentle, his heart gave up. At least he had a
decent burial. A new shroud and a coffin
made of good boards.” A few weeks later
the father died. “It took two days, I paid
the doctor but he came a day late, came
after the funeral. But the money was not
wasted. I needed the doctor for my second
son who was already in bed with dysentery.
He never got up again. I spent my last
money on doctors. The shrouds, we made from

12
his own shirts, 2 weeks later. My last two sons
were dead too. Three weeks. The bench I sat
shiva on was still warm when I had to sit again.
For those 2, the house committee had to make a
collection to buy shrouds. I swore to do any work
to repay but I had no money. But I tell you the truth.
They sent me food coins for my 2 dead sons. At first I
wanted to return the coupons. My whole life I did
not touch what wasn’t mine. But then I had another
thought. God must know very well how I suffer
over my children being buried in others’ shrouds. So
he sent me those potatoes. Now I am going to sell them
and give the money back to he committee. They can use
the money. Lots of people die in the ghetto.”

13
Bert's Restaurant and Truck Stop - Lyn Lifshin

the waitress' midriff flabs over

stained white leggings that
dwindle into once white mud
spattered shoes. "Herb tea?
No, honey," so I order Lipton
In a Melamac cup so scorched
It’s like sucking chapped lips.
Fake wood Formica rubbed
so hard there's just wood
around the edges. 'NO LOITER-
ING" glows over a bed of
dead cacti. "Won 1000 at
Bingo last night," the Bingo
Queen grins, sprawled across

14
the bench. "Gonna hit the
casinos today, tryout some new
ones. I like that sausage break-
fast but I'm dieting. Thelma,
get me one of those fried
cakes." Smoke billows up from
the booths. Camels, cigar smoke.
"Gonna snow, they're predicting,"
the waitress with stringy hair
promises, sloshing coffee with a spoon
you can see something like egg flecks
hanging off in the middle of the cup.
"Yeah, promised last Sunday but never
showed. But I'm vanilla and caramel
cream I can pull open and dump in.
Don't never use pudding, makes it
taste strange. Good snow does it,
delicious. I can taste it already," she
sighs between drags as butter settles
into a burnt English muffin, slow as the
drawl of the man who staggers in asking
for blood worms. Sunday morning,
Pocumbe, a county, the church sign
"of love"

15
 Taylor's Pawn - Don Winter

he was sitting in a rocking chair where'd all this shit come from
swaying just a little i asked wanting to leave
smiling his broken teeth before it was too late
we surveyed the clutter the price tags dangled
wedding bands watch chains portable tvs like the morgue tickets
frames that once held pictures on dead men's toes.
he watched us
in the convex mirror
as if each of us
was a loser
who'd hocked every last piece
of his life in a series
of bum deals

16
On Papa's Land - Jean Sellmeyer Smith
His shack now sleeps, its planks in tangled piles
of tumbled walls that once were laughter filled.
As calm and gray as dozing crocodiles,
the stiff and sun-bleached, cypress boards lie still.
His rows of rose, once sweet in pinks and creams
now reek of rum, near empty whiskey bottles.
His garden, wearing weeds of broken dreams,
is mulched with slivered glass where once tots toddled.
A slip of air blows dank of fields so fallow,
the sudden blast of last, hard-labored breath.
His toothless plow sits rusting in the hollow
to grin and gape at winter's coming death.
His crumbling stone casts shadows, long and dark.
There's only the lonely call of a meadowlark.

17
 The Rag Man Rips His Reward
Terry Thomas

A consumer in cloth — Old gown down in the pecking

every two months he comes knocking,
tick-tocking through
the neighborhood like a beetle
in cotton. What I give
is rotten, frayed, played
beyond redemption. There is an
exemption for taxes,
(auditor fraught in twill
and tweeds), but I usually
have what the raggedy man needs:
order of satin, battered jeans
from courtship time, smock when
my tummy was tick-tocking
with Billy. Now only the past
is frilly, the comforter scored in
spots, the knick-knocker pleased
with treasures given away.

18
Marginalia - Susan Snowden

Nameless
gray faces

Characters cut
from the script Get a house.
Get a job.
Millions adrift
Sober up,
in the margins
we insist,
No room at the top closing the book.
no role in the story
whose winnowed text
narrows
by
the
day.

19
 End of the Day
Robert L. Brimm

The ceiling grows vague my car, as it has all day,

and cold, its tiles swirling dull pewter funnel pulling
like snowflakes toward me, me in, pouring me out here

and I taste them, melting, where I lie on a strange bed

the bed sways under me in a cheap motel, thinking
as though bearing me away of the events bringing me

to some strange place, my eyes here, thoughts drifting

close, and I see highway, like the slow, curling smoke
an undulating ribbon whirring in a room suddenly empty,

toward me, narrow out there, being pulled toward the ache
broadening here where it gains and soreness of tomorrow,
speed, goes threading beneath not caring, not caring at all.
20
Who Among Us? - Matt Dennison

Sitting here at 2:16

in the morning, cutting up
my one hotdog with
rusty scissors,
placing each slice square
in the middle of a cracker
and then
lifting it carefully
to my grateful, waiting
lips, I wonder: who among us
can grasp the subtle nature
of ecstasy?

21
 Sightings - R. Yurman

The Virgin has been seen and heard

in Conyers, GA for three years now.
She says unless the U.S. turns to
God, there will be a war here.
Talk-show caller

Far from Conyers, Georgia,

Red-clay towns chosen at random
not for piety or proximity;
wandering immaculata
intent on saving us all
not just the few who listen.
a woman knowing little of God or Mary
sits on a sidewalk
an empty cup beside her feet
"eating air from the bowl of her palm."
War is already here.

22
 Robin On My Mind - Ida Fasel

A robin sweeps down

to the grass we share: He jabs jabs jabs,
his beak a thunderclap
a little guy, to the squirmer secured
a papa, busy to provide. on ancient muscles,
upborne, take-home protein —
We distance each other
courteously, while I still belabor
I with my ballpoint a line that, gotten right,
and writing pad — will be my happy supper.
aspiring drudges both
whose deep absorption doing
what we are here to do
is the measure
of our achievement.

23
 Penny Candy - Herman Slotkin
When I was small and we were poor,
I was lost in love with penny candy.
On those rare days we entered Candy Kingdom,
glass jars glowed and glistened with many-colored joy.
The sweetened air murmured 'cherry' and 'lemon' and 'licorice.'
I could feel the solid ball becoming magic in my mouth,
the taste of cherry growing and spreading down to my soul.
A pile of pennies lay in our tin pishke*
which hung from a nail on the kitchen doorframe,
a vague image on its face, swaying whenever someone brushed it.
Now and then a bearded man in a black hat would empty it
"to give to the orphans."
Alone, I looked long at that box with the invisible slot
Into which the coins when clinking.
Could two, maybe three pennies, just fall out?
Could the bearded man's door be a little ajar?
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I jostled the pishke with the handle of broom.
It swayed, slid forward on the nail, and dropped.
The crash filled the entire kitchen,
filled and froze me.
In deadly silence I glanced at what I had destroyed.
The pishke lay like a stricken child on its side.
On its face was the figure of a little boy
with outstretched arms begging love.
His eyes spoke with fear and pleading,
looking upward toward an invisible fist waiting to strike.
I looked away.
A penny lay there shining with the halo of penny candy.
I seized it. By the time mama returned
I had eaten a sweet ball of red,
and swallowed the gall of guilt.
*a tin charity box
first published in Feelings, Winter, 1997
25
 Madonna of Blood
and Rain
Albert Huffstickler
She said she was the lady
of raindrops some days and
some days the lady of
blood but she was hardly
ever the lady of roses
because
roses didn't grow in alleys
but rain and blood came there
often. She said she hadn't
slept in many years because
she had to be awake to look
after things. She had a
wreath of plastic flowers
woven into her cornsilk
hair and her eyes were more
distant than planets, more
distant than planets from
another solar system, another
galaxy, another universe.
She said she could help me
escape if I wanted from
this prison planet. She
said some days she was the
lady of lilacs though
lilacs didn't grow in alleys
but mostly she was the lady
of blood and raindrops — and
streetlamps, she added,
26
standing there with the
lamplight streaming over
her and a slow rain falling
through her cornsilk hair
and over her small bare
feet, blessing me with
fingers fragile and fleeting
as sparrows and eyes too
distant to ever return in
a lifetime.
First published
Jan., Feb., March 2000,
Poetry Depth Quarterly
North Highlands CA
Hope and Despair - Albert Huffstickler

When I finally stuck myself in the library

as a clerk typist at the age of 45, it was
an act of both hope and despair; despair
over ever finding a job that paid real money
and would help me meet all my obligations,
and hope that I could plant myself and focus
on my writing and make some sort of a
contribution in spite of all my failings.
I've been over this before ad infinitum.
There was just some part of me missing, that
part that understands how to relate to the
work ethic in a creative manner: I just
spaced out any time I thought about doing
something career-wise. So that's what I did
and that's where I stayed. And if one part
of me just wanted to take off and keep going
27
till it came to the end of the world, well
that wasn't going to happen. And besides,
I didn't really know how to take care of
myself so it's probably just as well. I
would never have survived on the streets.
So there you have it. I stuck myself in the
library and I stayed and poured my energy
into the writing and here I am. So many of
our actions, particularly the important ones,
combine hope and despair. Or say, God uses
the carrot and the stick. Out of it came
a body of work. I don't have to judge it.
I never told myself I had to — only write it
and get it out. And that's what I did. And
I did that because it was all I could do.
I wish I could have done more. I wish I
hadn't made so many wrong turns, and made
so many promises I couldn't keep. But here
28
I am and there it is. I would hope that
a lot of people who ask more of themselves
than they can give could read this and say
that it wasn't too bad a choice and emulate
it. Everybody has something. It may not
even be what they want but they've got it.
And when you come to think about it, a
combination of hope and despair provides
a pretty good motivation, there's a lot of
energy there — or enough anyway.
September 20, 1999
First printed Mojo Risin' Issue 19, February
2000, Chicago IL
ISSN 0197-4777

published 11 times a year since 1979

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