Waterways:

Poetry in the Mainstream

2001

February
Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream
February 2001

Is it a tale you strum?

Alfred Kreymborg, "Improvisation"

 WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream
Volume 22 Number 2 February, 2001
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 Sylvia Manning 14-15 Bill Roberts 23-24
Ida Fasel 7-8 Gerald Zipper 16-17 Robert L. Brimm 25
Gordon T. Osing 9 Terry Thomas 18 Don Winter 26
Susanne Olson 10 Paul Grant 19 Albert Huffstickler 27-28
R. Yurman 11-12 Robert Cooperman 20-21
Joan Payne Kincaid 13 John Grey 22

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 My Mother Used To Be a Singer in a Band
Joy Hewitt Mann
I remember every word of songs She likes the home (at least I think she does)
my mother used to sing. — she called me Madge the other day,
She could stretch a smile to last a week her dead sister's name.
feeding us with her used-to-bes. Jessie talks of struggles in the West.
Used to be a singer in a band, Johnny's faith hangs rabid on his face.
stiff-legged shifts from one to four, And Mother stares and smiles at walls.
waxing floors to make the dead ends meet, We are the used-to-bes that fled her mind —
nights in her eyes that made me blush — I remember every word of songs
she sweeps the tufts of red hair from her face my mother has forgotten now.
(bad dye job done for cheap)
her quiet voice rubbed raw with
years"Drinkin' rum and co-ca-co-la"
Johnny's puppy-bum wagging
Jessie's teetotum across the floor.
4
The Pied Piper at Sea - Joy Hewitt Mann
From days at Brighton Beach
I woke to ocean waves and children pledging vomit
against parents' despair.

On the North Atlantic

we were sweet drowned things
wading down the gullet
of the tarpaulin shrouded decks;
hiding from the steward’s ministering
to pale mummies in their berths
and daddies nursing whiskies
stoically.

We owned the boat.

5
For three days
S.S. Atlantic was overrun with rats no mummy/daddy to stop you.
that would not leave a listing ship:
riding the rails We swung from hoists, climbed poles,
while dark-haired men screamed at us in sharp rode lounge chairs down the angled decks
gutterals, waving arms racing for the sea.
like enraged gulls.
The waves had pruned us white as slugs
We shrieked and cornered when rockhard mummies/daddies
just beyond their reach claimed us; all
scampered over ropes but one.
and rigs
and magical machinery
hearing music in our heads —

6
 Rhapsody in Blue - Ida Fasel
(first performed in New York City, February 12, 1924)
Swing high, lip-wrapped
sweet clarinet! for an unknown
Take the vertiginous destination, fully
sweep of the long vertical line engaged, reveling in suspense
in its from height
daring to height,
ascent, searing, leaving us in
surging on on and on, ecstatic possession
glowing glissando cutting through at the pause. And that's only how
muzzy it starts.
bluemoods
of inner search,
yearning led to climb in
stages more and more audacious,
each note
7
 Do You Know the Land? - Ida Fasel
She is singing in the light
and I in sapphire dark
am singing with her, asking
Connais tu le pays? — standing tall,
straight, radiant where I sit
sharing the resources
of the deep places of her voice.
We are bonded by the beauty
of the music, the common experience
of that enraptured sound, the essence
of warm human sentiment, the country
of hope where practice of the ideal
is ideal.
8
The question lengthens within its bars,
soars to an answer. Before us the land
in flower. C'est là! — there —
south where the breezes blow cool,
and the air is garlanded with orange blossoms
and longing comes to an end at last
in what is glorious, simple, pure.
The audience applauds. I linger
with Mignon home again, the lost child
found, after hardship the sunny reunion,
everything the dream promised,
a world away in song.
 A Tribute to Bonnie Raitt - Gordon T. Osing
"What doth it profit a man...?"

To gain a soul but lose the world, though? In a used car

lot of grinning grimly myths besides. Aunty Love,
you were sometimes fun to think about, listening
to a memory I don't have but can think of anyway.
When stuff is perfect it makes you want to get into it:
that's all that's left of rocker Keats. Not break into,
2nd story man, another crazy. (You think you're alone,
you are, on a highway going off any-and-everywhere.)
Soul is what you have or you don't have one, a great shirt.
The Bluesmen got that right. Night after night after night.
Love is negotiation. It's what you do when desire has been dealt
a great hand again, and gone and made some fool one perfect.
(Ma'm, I'm searching for miles of words.) Merely may your particular soul
begin and end in playing, always be your getting down instrument.
(with special thanks to W. B. Yeats)
9
Searching - Susanne Olson
Sometimes,
I am tired.
I want to go home,
leave this bustle,
this striving life,
become myself.
Sometimes,
I want to rest
atop a towering cliff,
gaze into immensity,
inhale mountains, vales,
vast oceans,
lose and find myself.
Sometimes,
I want to fall asleep
in a forest,
10
listen to eternity's hum:
wind sings softly to the trees,
singing me to myself.
Sometimes
I want to sink into my dreams,
behold my world,
touch my life,
be myself.
Sometimes,
I must write
to unlock my universe,
descend into my soul,
my blood, my essence,
to reach myself.
Sometimes,
I must word
my Self.
the poets congregate - R. Yurman
to tell their truths
and their eyes shine with the telling
their voices battle and tumble
growing louder and louder
who will hear them if they don't hear each other
even the shyest elbow in
get boisterous and bellow

outside
the world is filled
with earth quiet
creatures of the night
making their creature noises
sounds that float upward and upward
into the lidless sky

11
black moths thunk the panes here language shouts hour after hour
distant nightbirds hoot and cry and sleep is a concept
the poets don't hear them far away as laughter
behind the glass they eat cake when it sounds in the dark
rattle ice-cubes in their glasses like the poets are laughing
swivel rise walk in circles really they are wooing each other
their voices never tire like whispers close to the ear
and neck rubs and kisses
for them this is a night like no other
back home no one listens
those who don't snort outright
say why bother words
are just words useful things
to get the house warm
the clothes clean pass the butter

12
 The Trustee - Joan Payne Kincaid

She is a Village Trustee driveway lip in the dark, and dies

who laughs a lot of pneumonia after lying there
when her dog runs through all night she laughs hard

everyone's yard breaking when she says "I hope they

perennials and relieving himself, give him a good send-off"
when her shrubs grow up she laughs when the paper

a corner STOP sign so drivers says there is money un-account-

at the intersection cannot see; ed for in the Village records
she laughs when parked and it is being investigated.

facing the wrong way in front

of her house she laughs when
an old man falls over a new

13
 And the Trees or Whatever - Sylvia Manning
"...if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human
beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to
reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in
themselves;..." (Virginia Woolf, Room of One's Own, last paragraph)

Her man gone elsewhere, she picks up

ebony seeds:
puts them in a paper sack until their
heaviness might break its fibre
(tissue only of some other trees,
every one of them native to somewhere)

carefully, though, through hours of

reiterated "Love ... (and the score)”
or vice-versa
from tennis court in this park
where ebony mothers
14
have survived
in site of it or church so that sack does not break,
(named for son of Pharisees, so that a thousand trees
Paul) across or more
the street she carries off, smiling at last
to that old assassin Paul,
appropriately mindless of waving goodbye to men who for hours,
male bodies in competition contentedly hitting tennis ball,
for a chance to stand let her be,
in victory, collecting ebony.
or of their needs for exercise,
movement, sounding their hormonics
behind court wire
beyond the canopy
of ebony

15
 The Immigrants - Gerald Zipper
Little men shivering on cold corners
despised scant creatures
hovering like darting birds
waiting for the handful of creased dollars
for hoisting and hauling
gouging niches in a fat sneering country
men with round faces horned hands coal-button eyes
sweet smiles
baffling smiles
hinting at obscure mountain legends
cheeks aflame from high air of Andes
my father's father
dapper man hauling bewildered wife and five runny children
rode the splintery seats of wind-hemorrhaged railway car
he was blind
adrift in his vast sightless desolation
16
bundles tied with blankets hanging pots and pans
Bucharest to Hamburg
seasick passenger vomit on a bellowing sea
my father the boy pushed and shoved a huge beer barrel
buying first night's sleep behind a boisterous bar
crammed in rooms of shrieking Lower East Side
mothers sons daughters stitchers boarders
eating bathing at pinched kitchen sinks
children swarming under balloon bundles
smells flavoring the stifling air
shish kebob kielbasa mamaliga
neighbors on brash Brooklyn streets
speaking snatches of Hungary Poland Russia Roumania
children's children squeezing themselves into narrow spaces
filling slots for businessmen doctors lawyers councilmen
moving to fine houses fancy lawns big cars dot coms
despising the coarse slight immigrants
who make the houses so fine and the lawns so fancy.
17
 Dark Souvenir on White Plastic - Terry Thomas

Found a bat wing on my lawn chair— Now there must be some mousy
piece of old crepe paper left over little mammal trying to one-
from some air dance. wing it, gray helicopter
Felt European seein' putt-putt-putting, taking aim on a moth.
it there. Wanted to try a Transylvania Left the cloth-soft piece
twist on my accent, in the chair for someone,
cloak from my nose down something, to claim.
and utter bbblllood til
I got at the vein of mystery.
Don't have a cat—
or even a history of feline marauders
dismembering anything, but
I remember spying what looked like
a bat sign on the moon last night.

18
 Dear Heart - Paul Grant
Because: although only some
things are possible, nothing is
impossible, and because:
of all the chambers of
the memory palace the heart is
there is at least one with something—
say, a rock...say, an odd boot
whose mate has gone to the dogs...
say, a book with words in it
or a book with blank, unlined
pages the color of the moon...
o say whatever pleases you—
wedged between the door
and jamb, so that it can't quite close
itself and gather enough dust
from the darkling air to choke on,
19
because: well, a cold beer (or near)
and a wind off the bay
conjoin, conspire, conjure, because:
that's what they do at night
when everyone's looking the other way,
because: there is the inevitable one
and there are the uncertain (but not random)
many and they are as likely to be the same
as not, despite conjunctions,
junctions, junk and memory
and the memory of junk, of wrack
and pinon incense, because:
it is as necessary as a dream of one
more breath is to the dying, I thought
I'd drop doubt and redoubt and a few
lines to say I've loved you ever,
do now, shall alway.
A Fair Deal - Robert Cooperman
"I was raised on a farm,"
Sarah assures me over the phone,
"there's nothing I haven't
seen or heard,
so if you feel like cursing,
fire away."

We're talking about a state

legislator who wants to arm
high school teachers
with concealed handguns,
an idea that takes my breath
like a frigid shower,
but none of the benefits
of feeling clean afterwards.

20
Sarah and I usually talk Then the morning paper,
business, but today, and that legislator urging
after a rampage of murder teachers with hidden weapons
at a local high school, to patrol school corridors:
we can no more stop our dismay fast-draw sheriffs
than I can halt in Old West shoot outs,
a late spring snow. bystanders ducking
while bullets fly:
The night before, lethal swarms of hornets.
my wife and I told ourselves
we weren't going to watch
coverage of the carnage;
but we couldn't switch off
the endlessly replayed images
of kids running, hands over heads,
as if hostages in a war.

21
 Tug of War - John Grey
In a muddy field, they grasp the rope,
burrow with their feet.
Two powerful teams of six
pull hard against each other,
need all their strength
to maintain equilibrium.
Their wives, their children
watch intently, their eyes
so focused on the combat
they exert another kind of tension,
clasping hard with their vision,
adding extra hands, extra muscle,
with just the squeezing of a brow.
22
Long into the cold, wet afternoon,
no one gives an inch,
the rope so hard and taut,
an army could march down it.
Inside each of them,
player and spectator alike,
are ropes, seized tight at both ends,
and stretched to breaking point.
Even down to the last breath
of the light, there is no slackening.
 Eleven - Bill Roberts
I definitely peaked at eleven:

Harry Truman threw out the first ball

to open the Senators' season,
I attended my first production of "The Mikado,"
a boarder introduced me to spaghetti
with tomato sauce, cauliflower and one meatball,
the Redskins came back miraculously
from the dead and beat the Cardinals in a doozy,
W. H. Hudson spoke to me in "Green Mansions,"
J. Edgar Hoover let me heft his submachine gun
in his cluttered F.B.I. office,
a nice girl named Jane Trilling gave me my first real
kiss that made all my toes wiggle,
I was MVP on our 90-pound football team
that went undefeated with me at quarterback,

23
Dad got me my own library card and put the first
ten dollars in my postal savings account,
my older sister taught me to be a confident jitterbugger,
Mom had her ninth and last child,
I tanned that summer without peeling,
and my favorite pitcher, Bob Feller,
came to town and won all three times with his fastball.

It's been downhill ever since.

Published in the July 1999 issue (Vol. 5, Issue 6) of George & Mertie's Place
24
No Small Matter - Robert L. Brimm
No matter what I say,
I can't help feeling
someone has said it
before me, and better,
but perhaps my saying
it again will provide
the spark someone
has been seeking
to kindle inspiration,
and that could be
no small matter.

25
 It's Not Much But It's a... - Don Winter

So many nights Now when someone calls you

when the conveyor shuts down a lifer, you stare out the window—
you throw your boots the work you do best.
from step to step You throw your drink down
and your lunch box swings out wide in one swallow. And when they ask
with a rhythmical clunk. where'd you learn to drink like that
you answer: It is part of my job.
I'll work here a coupla years
'til I figure what it is
I really want
you told them at the bar
twenty years ago.

26
 Dissolution - Albert Huffstickler

We're really the cells go mad his head on

water, you know, and the mind goes a stone. Perhaps
water and form. cancerous. Grace he's a saint.
It's not dust is the restoration
to dust. You of form. My soul keeps
could say of leading me to
a man; he That man in a place without
didn't die, the alley — you form. The winds
he dissolved. could say his life of chaos howl
has lost its and I howl back
Madness is losing form or till I become
the form of your has taken on a thing of
mind. Cancer is a new one. silence and my
losing the form He sleeps on body erupts
of your cells: the ground with into something

27
elemental, You think you're Now that I'm
sexual rid of me but no one, I
as I fight back. one stormy night roam free.
I'll come back Some days I'm
That man in the And rain on you. the wind,
gold casket ate some days rain.
too many tomorrows Just touching Some days I'm just
and died of indigestion. your fingertips a silence between
was sex. the raindrops.
God promised me The rest was
the truth, then merely
led me to a darkened recapitulation.
alley, littered with
effluvia and said, We think that chaos
"Rest here for eternity." will destroy us
but what's destroyed from Artisan,
is our illusions. Wilmette Il,
November 2000
28
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