© 1979~ TE!'l PENNY PLAYERS IN'C.
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THE NEW YORK SlfATIi WATERWAYS PROJECT g.t:ew out of a desire to present to New-Yock residents t.he artistry of tae word
in a novel sett:i:ng. The waterw;ays ca'Ught our imaginations II from a C0ncern for aesthetics and "tine ecology gf New. York r:i!vers and laRes. We thank the S0uth Street Seaport Museum, the Nat.ional Maritime Historical Society, the J:\tew York HarboJr Festival and the Departmeat of P0rts and Terminals for their cooperat.ion and reG:emmendations. Poets and ind.ependent presses have responded by o£fering their talent
aa peFformers and sharing in the eXlrense. We will be exhib:L;ting and !reading at. the south Stre'et Seaport Museum on July 4th, at P:i~r 13 in staten Island on July 21st, Pier
84 at West 44'th Street in Manhattan on July 29 I at Nett Avenue and 44th IDrive in Queens on August 12, at t.he North
Ri ver Bulkhead 1m Gr:eenwich Village (West Stl?eet and Bank Street) on August 19th, at the Fult.on Ferry Landing Brooklyn on August 25th and 26th and in Kingston on September 8th and 9th.
July 29, Pier 84 at west 44th street, Manhattan
noon. 12:15 12:30 12:45
1:00 1:15 1:30 1:45 2:00 2:15 2': 30 2:45 3:00 3:15 3:30 3:45 4:00 4:15 4:30 4:45 5:00 5:15 5:30 5:45 6:00
Rochelle Kraut Jay McDonnell Daryl Chin Rose Lesniak Pedro Pietri Sharon Mattlin Bob Holman Barbara Fisher Donald Lev Enid Dame Sidney Bernard
Roland Legiardi-Laura
. Madeline Keller Stanley Barkan Rose Sher
Brenda Connor-Bey Barbara Baracks Zoe Best
Ellen Aug
Stephen Fife Charles Doria Barbara Holland Louis Reyes Rivera Maurice Kenny Richard Spiegel
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We welcome to the New York State Waterways Project:
Bramwell-Marsh Publishers, PO Box 385, Staten Island New York 10302, Poetry
Brooklyn Ferry Poets, 741 President Street, Brooklyn New York 11215, Poetry
Stanley Barkan, 'Insect Love' from The Blacklines Scrawl, Cross Cultural Communications
Sidney Bernard, 'New York Baroque Ensemble' from City Edition, an unpublished collection of poems
Enid Dame, 'A Celebration' from Home Planet News Maurice Kenny, 'On the staten Island Ferry' from Coming to an Understanding, a work of poetry in progress
Donald Lev, 'Dedicatory Psalm' from Home Planet News Jay McDonnell, 'For Hy Father' published first in The Westbere Review
Sharon Mattlin, 'Bugaboo· an excerpt from the short story, a work in progress
Grants from the United states Department of Labor and the NYC Department of Employment CETA Title VI have made the following appearances at Pier 84 possible:
WORDS TO GO, courtesy of the Cultural Council Foundationj Performances by the following poets: Rochelle Kraut, Daryl Chin, Rose Lesniak, Pedro Pietri, Sharon Mattlin, Bob Holman, Roland Legiardi-Laura, Charles Doria, Zoe Best, Barbara Baracks, Brenda Connor-Bey, and CoordinatoJ Madeleine. Keller
Poets appearing under the sponsorship through CETA of the American Jewish Congress' Artists Project and the AJC's Martin Steinberg Center are - Ellen Aug and Stephen Fife
Grants from Poets & Writers and The New York State Council on the Arts making possible payments to poets appearing July 21 Pier 13 SI; August 12 LIC; August 25th & 26th Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn
Our thanks to the NYC Department of Ports & Terminals for allowing us the use of their piers;
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ON THE NIGHT OF THE FULL MOON
Rochelle Kraut
In April heqvy with child
Awoke to blue brightness in my room
The full.moon on a cool and crystal clear Sky high and looking upon me
Sending the beautiful round form of the Earth WhlCh is me across the floor
My belly so round and heavy flattened
On the floor into the form of the goddess Or a muse about to glve u~' a secret
The moon so bright sendlng its glories Into the sky through the earth
Through the prisms in my rOOin
Elegantly dancing rainbows from some other world pale and ghostlike' but
Here nevertheless
19 April 79
FOR MY FATHER
Jay McDonnell
My father accepted cancer like everything else: bad pay,
Night shifts on the moaning winter docks, April taxes, 5 kids,
Landlords.
He accepted our glad-hand lies; Smiling, he accepted us
And the futile radium treatments.
But six months before the wasting agony's last bony shudder
He pursued the lovely swift-striking Coronary, My mother loved him for this bravest infidelity.
ANOTHER SUMMER POEl'l
Daryl Chin
waiting for some indication
(a breath of air. a breeze, a gust of wind) the heat oppresses
new york city summer steaming pavements
baking concrete broiling sidewalks the air hangs heavily
clinging
a wet embrace tossing in sleep
a lack of comfort dreams
children dancing under the forceful torrents of fire hydrants dogs circling with tongues hanging down
people gathered around the stoops at night
talking
trying to pass the time the heat
waiting for the heat to pass radios drifting
music blaring
noise seeping
through stifled air summertime dreams
going to movies to escape the heat
ice cream and soda in increasing intakes tossing in sleep
dreams
the beach
the park staying up late the dark
summer vacations dreams
THE END
S
T
U
V
double me
X
why
me? Rose Lesniak
" .
Alice Cary
As I sit here painting over
The night, and the fire, and the snow, And all your boyish make-believe
In that garret rude and low,
My heart is broken within me,
For my love must needs allow That you were at the rehearsal then Of the part you are playing now.
Exce{pt from a short story 'Bugaboo' Sharon Mattlin
... 'It was still light enough to sit outside, but the mosquitoes started getting bad so everyone sat on the screened-in porch. Benji asked Gwen to draw the Bug for
him, but she didn't feel like it. She was drawing a girl
in a garden of flowers. Even though Lydia was a ye a r older than Gwen. the people she drew didn't look as good as the ones Gwen drew. When Lydia drew people she made the arms corne out from the head and it didn't look right to her after wards, but she didn't know how to fix it. It was like when she wrote her name, Lydia, and the 'L' came out backwards. Some t.Lrne s it did and sometimes it didn't and after she'd finished the letter she saw if it was or it wasn't but
she never knew wh i Le her pencil was moving whether it would come out right or backwards. But when she drew the Bug
and put arms corning out of its head it looked just right
so she drew it several times ...
Lydia went back to her crayons. Once she drew a circle I and put the Bug underneath it and that was the Bug in China. Then she covered an entire piece of white paper with stripesl of all th~ different. C7"ayola Colors ';Ind then, covered all [ of that wlth black. Wlth a small palr of SClssors she scraped away part of. the black wax to draw the Bug. Since she couldn't remember which colors were where once she'd covered the whole thing with solid black Crayola, the colors that emerged were always a surprise, glowing like fireworks in a dark sky. Then she scratched her name in multi-colored streaks .... '
LONG HOE, LONG HOE WITH YOUR RAW WOODEN HANDLE
Bob Holman All the way to the groundline
& then up comes the shoot
Except now with yam eyes in my pocket & the snow around you, Long Hoe,
I must sit & think of my family hunger & how I wi]l return either empty-handed
Or eating the seeds that would harvest fill & this ii-i the second time live sung this
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Enid Dame
A CELEBRATION
This menu is a poem:
8 jewelled chicken 8 jewelled duck lion head
mother and child reupited whole golden carp.
Greedy,
we eat words
while waiting for food, drink yellow tea in glasses
like our Russian grandparents did
The Chinese waiters play cards
at the center table.
Reckless,
I splash soy sauce on shrimp and eggs, forget MSG
forget headaches
live dangerously for once! This is a celebration.
Tomorrow,
they'll be selling poems on newstands to subway riders
along. with PLAYBOY
and the NEW YORK POST.
Today,
we're getting high on food and
names of food
and poems served on plates studded with jewels
that gli tter
like vegetables
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NEW YORK BAROQUE ENSEMBLE
Sidney Bernard
They come on stage, take a low
bow. Three are in swallowtails,
the fourth gowned in swirls of red
silk. Instruments are held high, like batons of musical royalty. They
sit down, do trial runs for perfect pitch. Courtly violin, huffing bassoon, somber-swift oboe, keening flute. Soon they are lost in 17th Century Baroque, for an audience dressed in off-hours, Villagey levis-denims-kerchiefs.
LAST OF THE RED HOT DOLLARS
Roland Legiardi-Laura
Susan, an atheiest, trusted no gods 'specially our silver-dollar one.
r lift her gently off my desk, hefting her weight and contemplating the sour frown given her by the engravers.
Feather rustling. wing flapping--coin flips over.
An eagle is about to land on the moon
talons gripping an olive branch "Beware of birds bearing gifts."
susan's muffled .voices strains through my fLlgers.
IMPERIAL 'EAGLE LAYS CLAIM TO MOON ... ANCIENT SYMBOL OF FEMININE POWER COLONI ZED ••
A traverso i fili di filobus/vedo la luna Soon we are home
pour my pockets till empty ridged coins hum and roll on the smooth leather desk top
Susan B. jingles flat and stares out at me from her oqe good eye.
She looks uncomfortable.
In God we Trust hove=s by her lips (comic-book thought bubble)
How could dey do dis to you noble suffragette? champion of the disenfranchised.
my fingers clench tight in disgust round the compromising disc. pressure builds slowly inside my fist
suddenly the fingers a.re forced open. feathers flying everywhere
hair and bits of olive branch drop to the floor.
Later that night. amidst the debris I count one hundred small coins.
on the front of the coins a woman smiling and winking stares full face. on the back a bird plucked and cooked in the centerpiece of a feast
the inscription reads E Pluribus Vincerum.
FOR KAREN SILKWOOD
Madeleine Keller
(Karen Silkwood, a worker and union activist at KerrMcGee Corp., in oklahoma was killed when her car crashed as she was on her way to deliver documentation of radia~ tion hazards at the company plant.)
I want to think of Karen Silkwood watching secrets flow over her desk like water,
an endless stream of secretaries, receptionists--
material secrets
buried deep in their desks neatly addressed & stapled, like letters returned" unread
I want to think of Karen Silkwood Le av.Lnq home each morning,
her briefcase beside her
when the secrets she knew
fell to ticking
like the paper secrets shredded by men in power
(she poisoned herself, they said,
when traces of plutonium appeared in her urine, II ••• she drank it on purpose. II)
I want to think of Karen Silkwood unlocking that box of secrets, her bravery,
at last understanding the highway, the white distance of headlights behind her
INSECT LOVE
Stanley Barkan
My eyes crawl over
the flesh of my love quivering with delight
The brush of our legs
makes locust rhythms
in the night of candles drawing us to their flame
We blaze
against the waxen stake melted into semen ash
Then rise phoenix moths
seeking for the light.
UNRECONCILED
Hiram Rich
At morn he stood before her, With heart and tongue aflame, To her entreating glances
No kiss replying came.
At night he leaned above her White embers lacking flame, To his belated kisses
No answering kisses came.
ANIKE & JAJA: AN UNFINISHED URBAN FOLKTALE
Brenda Connor-Bey
she would sit sometimes
feeling the hardness of her jean's seams pressing against her naked womanness.
sometimes, she'd pull them up by the waistband pressing a little harder into them
feeling the wave of pleasure carrying her
into another world.
there were times when she'd squirm in
her seat/feeling the wetness oozing from inside her
making her tingle and feel good allover
and, there were the other times
·when the fever became too much for her she'd run into her room
throw herself onto her bed
placing crumpled bedsheets beneath her she'd rock her hips and rub her thighs together driving herself into a frenzy of self-satisfaction.
but, when it was over, trembling she stood crying
wishing it were him
instead of her fantasies.
Barbara Baracks
Sitting in the winter above Ke~ Street. next· to Cleveland Square in New York City
I am protected by the regularity of the floorboards the blackness of the row of floor-to-ceiling windows and the soft presence in this space, which is not mine Therels always .time, despite my hard line predictions Itls never really run out on me
Ruler and pencil,· ink, crayon, brush, soft pastel colors laid out every day: I gather them in
I notice, I donlt notice, I take care, I forget I work well with others, I fight all the time my ideas return to me when I fall asleep:
I thought that? They take care of themselves now (The cat on the floor could care less)
The friend on the floor is playing with her nice cutting up foamcore for a gift: a frame within
a frame within a frame -- in the center a real diamond damaged by spots
The next frame is round
There was a time when our people covered the whole land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor.
Chief Seattle, 1854
AN OFFERING OF QUESTIONS TO MEND THE BROKEN HOOP
Zoe Best
The academy of scientists
from urban states of mind recommended rocketing nuclear waste to the so distant and foreign sun or into the geosphere's tundra
if not to the heart
of earth's molten core to her lava soul.
Navajo bare of coral and turquoise dive into the mother's belly filling rail sleds with uranium day in and day out
then stand in line
for a months pay.
Canlt get into a clinic on a weekend or a holiday.
A year later a wooden marker is hit by sand riding a slap of one wailing wind.
Big Rock and Indian Point
Beaver Valley, Kewaunee and Oconee
they choose our names for these reactor sites. They stole our strong wind name--
Amerrique--
It's not the same since 1492
since 1945 since Alamogordo in New Mexico and its big sky flash.
Now a general in a jet orders plunder rape of the Sacred Black Hills in Dakota Land.
*an excerpt
(for)
(to) T. S. Eliot
M.1D NOT A GARDEN TO GROW IN
Ellen Wendy Aug
my love,
i cannot allow ponderous clouds to drop from leaded skies,
to box my head
between fleshy ledges of buffalo rock-therefore i must walk back and away
from the garden so resplendent in languid summer green.
the garden,
where sun crossed moss clumps in profusion lush from forest rain, draping
garlands of trellised roses who weep-
yes, weep my love,
for their short season grows shorter when sun, jolly odd fellow, sits,
a huge orange bowl with a grin,
just behind iced grape clouds refusing h.i s embrace more than once every twelfth day.
weeping, my love,
as Fellini's Steiner wept for all mankind before plungeing the knife deep
into his heart of three, after
he reaffirmed the arid white wasteland, one scorching hollowed-out morning,
is no garden for children to grow in - "quando il mondo e Roma sty sempre cosi."
angelic curtains billow the corpse. hot winds climb the slab high-rise, not refreshing, never really touching,
but clocking the stasis around terrace corners, and
wee'ping,
weeping, my love, their silent sounds dry.
POEM IN TWO PARTS (1977)
Stephen Fife
You are
the physical world:
the space you fill
like a sculpture of pure air
Your skin
is another object, separate:
blue-veined
like marble
but as bruised
as fruit,
a surface
as impassable as glass--
things I love/ .
their ideal--
is hollowed in my brain
encased in stone.
THE GAME OF EUROPE round 4: Island
Charles Doria
in those province's which are absolutely nowhere strangeness crushes our only possible embrace yielding to the sky a rose idol
insane and decorous as echo death
my mind is clouded because nothing works
acrobat!
the elegant conventions
to which I sacrificed my manhood like the balletomanes of desire (more ethically than the apples
around which shadows turn)
are those robes bear away
with massive anxiety
into the bedrooms of dawn; god makes it there to
an incense that melts
the ice floes of the sexual system in the heavens of my regard
I'm speaking to you of myself the acrophobe nervous in the caress of my words
how can I blunt time's tooth or break loose from his jaw? ... I want all my lovers charmed
by these imitations of glass
is not all the world more beautiful today?
this thoroughness is just a fish gasping in the vacuum of my heart a soldier of both sexes
lampooned in gaslight
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THE SHELL
Barbara Holland
That. shell
which you gave me
as a souvenir from summer,
with the stripes
of gray and white that climbed a spiral around its dome,
puffed up like a twist of frozen custard
it was haunted.
In the evening
it lifted slightly, releasing three black tentacles
which writhed and twitched with an iodine odor.
Later it lifted higher to display t"\.:o pinpoints of a vicious yellow
which peered out from underneath it;
that pretty shell!
THIS ONE FOR YOU
Louis Reyes Rivera
From the crack
on this side street scar I reach up
to greet your pulsing touch even your walk
soft lurid stroke on a pavement gleaming with
hop skip slide in and trip fall
get up and run jump up and burst from your stare
... is beauty
You path the way of my life marked in effervescent strides You helped this shadow grow through thE! turbulence
sliding from your smile
and I am GLAD
that you persist
Insist
I call you once
for every breath you draw in this passing of steps
and I reach for the depths of black heaven brush off the dust
that dares to gather round this imprint you leave me and I am e 1 ate d
in our probability
hunt inside myself
to widen your grace
seek another adjective
to complement your glide and I laugh
Yes
I laugh with every dawn we say "Hello."
ON THE STATEN ISLAND FERRY for John Yau
Maurice Kenny
You brought me here when I was ten.
A friend suggested I write
a novel of how I wanted to push you off the ferry into the wake ...
fall like Sky-woman fell from the old world. My friend said impatience cured
curiosity, but I don't think novels
cure pain nor intention 6f guilt.
This morning the sun hangs
in the eastern sky and the moon sits in the west eyeing each other like jealous siblings never willing to share a dandelion
nor rib of venison. As I could not do without a mother, we cannot do without their argument.
They'll continue contesting
on such mornings as this, and I will continue pleased that you
had not been swallowed in the ferry's wake.
My father took me home again.
Richard Spiegel
When I opened the door to PJ1s apartment
the bolt fell off
as though it were attached to cardboard or rotted wood. Immediately the old man suggested we repair it
with masking tape.
But who would t.ha+ keep out? I wondered.
Certainly a small child
can tear through masking tape. And the tape never held;
for over a month the door hung open,
unbolted.
IiWhat do I have that
anyone would want to steal?" says PJ worrying about
the invitation
of an open door.
IIWhen are you
going to bring the hammer and nails to fix the bolt?1I he asks me.
I look at the door. It is cracked along
the hinges. A new door would be the best security. Against what?
The old man braces himself against the bannisters
as he climbs the stairs
to his Greenwich Village garret apartment.
The steps he has taken toward his eightieth year alive.
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CONTACT I I:, 50 Broadway, NYC, 10004 (Fourth Flood. Literary criticism, reviews of smalll press, poet.q.
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