Waterways:

Poetry in the Mainstream

2001

April
Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream
April 2001

Piping in silvery thin

Sweet staccato
Of children's laughter

Lola Ridge "The Ghetto"

 WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream
Volume 22 Number 4 April, 2001
Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher
Thomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

c o n t e n t s
James Penha 4-6 Bill Roberts 22-25
Will Inman 7-9 Lyn Lifshin 26
Joy Hewitt Mann 10-11 Kit Knight 27-30
Geoff Stevens 12 Albert Huffstickler 31-32
Sylvia Manning 13-16
cover photograph by B. Fisher
Paula Alida Roy 17-20
frontispiece Settei Hasegawa
Terry Thomas 21 (1819-1882)

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
©2001, Ten Penny Players Inc.
http://www.tenpennyplayers.org
 School Crossing - James Penha

A red light stops me

stranger here:
I recognize scents of seeping
seams
of hundreds of tiny cartons of milk
and cookies,
sawdust absorbing them
once eaten.
Elementary, my dear,
as mine the yellow school bus
accepting at three
a skinny towhead with pink-framed glasses fighting myopia
from filtrum to astonished eyebrows.
I see them slide,

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fall to the ground
as he spins to berate
the little freckled girl whose nerves
charge her brass-armored briefcase
pendulously
fore and after enemies.
Someone has stepped on his glasses!
She laughs at blond tears,
but comes to cry contrapuntally
when told by a toothless mouth from somewhere inside the bus
that the cross-eyed fellow,
one with a splotch on his shirt,
has drawn a beagle brightly in yellow
highlighter on her briefcase.
Screams and weeps!
scabbed knees

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and dry elbows,
runny noses,
no reposes!
when all day foreheads knot with sums
that will face times and divisions,
x and y (or perhaps 2x),
imaginary numbers and geometries, plane
and solid!
In the rear-view mirror I part my hair
now, know limits and probabilities,
but would not fly back with Peter Pan
had I to learn all those vectors and angles again.
I drive on

6
 heavy swelter - will inman

heavy swelter. sun screams wet air

a strong lad hoists a wrench, opens a fire plug, lets
heaven rush pell-mell down a brick street. water costs
but what price that ferocious bursts of bliss
on near-naked bodies . . . hollering, laughing,
jumping like young goats. God for a little while
looks the other way

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 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 tree 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.

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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 fear

sound the trumpets of jeweled rajah, chief:

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

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 Dancing to the Radio - Joy Hewitt Mann

Father
I can still see your army boots, "spit-
polished" you liked to say, and my own patent-leathers
black and shiny as a cat's eye, balanced
zig-zag to your dancing feet
one-two
one-two
around the kitchen table
dodging mother as she cleared the dishes.
Your hands held my wrists gently, lifting me tip-toes
as A String of Pearls caught us both.

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I saw you turn and wink, and when you reached one hand
to pat her in retreat
I almost fell.
I can still see your smile
and hers.
I have never quite regained my balance.

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 Laughter - Geoff Stevens

Laughter is a silvery sunshine mosaic

oscillating on a stream of elation,
flowing from a tilted throat
flung backwards to the sky,
a tinkling of flowing waters,
a gurgle, a gravel dragging surge,
a racing emotion towards the roar of rapids,
the crescendo, the echo, and the reverberation

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East Texas Back-door Fugue - Sylvia Manning

Woodpecker in mid-winter oak

one of first or last in Appalachian hardwood chain

for here begins the hickory-oak

that go through
Kentucky and beyond
to shade the Long Trail
to the northern border

hits it fast, relentless staccato, rat-a-tat-tat

Then moves over only yards of freeze-

tanned golden grass to trees

just barely north of first percussion taps

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 to rap again
with eight or ten hard
"Nothing here matters but me"
repeats, amazingly mechanically
like his first rift

Then drifts still farther north

letting wind chimes

hear their sweetness
swiftly dominant in time
and unleafed space again

Letting your near silence, near the lake, reign.

Malakoff, 2/96
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He Played for Jack - Sylvia Manning

He played for Jack

He played for me
He played in the festival night
for nobody —

saxophone in dark
parc des enfants

long after crowds

for that spectácle had gone

sitting but unseen

beneath black trees
beside St. Lawrence

flowing diamond black itself

below deepest indigo, July sky
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 midnight, Kerouac
long back to sleep of course

alone, and the sax-man alone,

the good healing Dr. Sax, as Jack
would have it

playing only by gift from the night

for anyone who wandered off bright-
lit beatific streets
to hear, in the hear and now
made whole by perfect tone,
the lonely saxophone.

July, 1998
Québec

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A Fall Through Ice - Paula Alida Roy

Last winter he waddled across solid ice;

his diaper wadded into red snowpants.
Back and forth behind his brother
he flapped unfeathered wings
until his legs slid under the dock's edge
where punky ice sucked his feet
or maybe his bright boots tapdancing
awakened a lake god who lured the sturdy boy
to trade easy air for mysterious water,
ride turtles to the beaver lodge,
dive with loons, float beneath the water lilies
far beyond our watchful eyes.

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However it was, the boots slipped in,
but the wings angled to catch the dock
and his soggy bottom came to rest
on slushy ice at the edge of sullen water.
so he was plucked up cold and shaken,
his bright blood slow while ours beat fast.

Later he steamed in the tub

as we laughed at his narrative of the fall:
"I went to say hi to the fishes," he explained,
but we were not consoled and now we plot
how to freeze solid all the dark waters of his world.

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 One Year - Paula Alida Ray

We watch from behind old masks as you

totter from table to bookcase,
careen off corners and stagger
into the dollhouse where you wobble,
a towering baby giant.

Your sister watches wary

as a gazelle at the watering hole:
she knows what she has to lose as you toddle
around like a medicine man peddling
your blue eyes like snake oil.

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You wear neither mask nor halo,
just the badges of one year's survival:
tiny scars, an appetite for more,
a tentative string of vowels and consonants,
and now and then other faces.

They inhabit yours, familiar and unknown,

claimed and disowned — we're not sure
we want to see them and even if we do,
how do they see us through your eyes?

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 A Fear of White Falling - Terry Thomas

Heard more snow dropping from junipers.

Scared me the first time,
like white spadefulls in a shallow
hole. I could imagine a melt,
then freeze, everything locked in glassy
ice, eyes and smile fixed, snow person
staring toward April . . .
but now I don't care.

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 Memorial - Bill Roberts

Maybe, after all, this is the perfect tribute

To the sudden death storm that happened here:
The shrill sound of children laughing,
Though it seems out of place.

I am moved to cover my eyes,

Suppress tears, reach for my wife's hand,
Finally seek out the laughing faces.
There may be a hundred,

Enjoying this perfect morning,

The sun having risen quickly
Over this solemn place and now blessing
Youthful visitors to a shrine

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Of man's hatred for fellow man.
The children's laughter and innocent play
On the barge ride over to the sunken warship
Make me reflect: we've come

Such a long way since I learned the words

To "Remember Pearl Harbor,"
The very same site being invaded this day by gleeful
Boys and girls waving miniature rising-sun flags.

published in the March 2001 online issue of Little Brown Poetry

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 Little Chocolate Lips - Bill Roberts

Your pouty lips don't fool me, painted

So recklessly with sticky chocolate
From a candy bar or an ice cream stick.
You want me and everyone passing by
To notice you. I do and marvel at
The sensation you've made of your sweet face.

Soon enough you'll grow up and put on real

Lipstick, shocking pink or mouth-watering
Red, maybe ripened brown, applied with
Great precision, provoking passersby
To notice you and your moist, puckered lips,
Pursed coquettishly, full of youthful disdain.

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Then, soon enough, you'll advance to an age
When your lips will tell quite another tale,
Your mouth crinkled and again smeared with the
Sweet chocolate of youth, quivering, perhaps
Questioning a forgotten endearment,
Eating a bonbon or an ice cream cone,
Again making a display of yourself.
Don't grow up too fast, Little Chocolate Lips.

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Leaving Blues - Lyn Lifshin

moths twist in the lilies.

a cherry branch left
on the blue slate
like an SOS in code
twitches against stucco.
Turquoise pulls from
the silver, like a lover
in a 1940's movie,
the frames speeding
up as what's coming
unglued swirls in its
staccato and what
isn't bleats like
a blues sax, shimmers,
iridescent as abalone.
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Sister Regis: The First Statue, 1884 - Kit Knight

It's my job to supervise

the chapel. Margaret's statue
isn't the first ever erected
on an American street, but
hers is the first ever cast
to honor
a woman. Margaret touched
thousands, and when she died
two years ago, thousands
marched in her funeral
procession. Both her parents
died when Margaret was
nine, barely a year
after they'd arrived in

27
this country; Margaret knew
the angels couldn't help her
because they'd all gone
away. Ten years later,
a yellow fever epidemic
killed 10,000 people
including Margaret's husband
and baby. There were hundreds
of widows and orphans. Using
savings from her job as
a washer woman, Margaret built
the first orphanage in
New Orleans. Ten years later,
fever — again — devastated
the city and over 11,000
people died. Everywhere,
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children and babies were
scared, hungry and
homeless. Margaret baked
bread and bought a dairy.
She gave free milk and
loaves to the destitute
and the sick. Margaret also
built three more orphanages
and a chapel. She spoke with
fighting courage, passionate
conviction and from a heart
that was breaking. In stone,
she's seated, smiling, embracing
a child and the raised letters
read — simply — MARGARET.
The German Orphan, 1869 - Kit Knight

Every night Poppa held me

On his lap and whispered,
"She was beautiful and
your momma died giving you
life, so you must
be worthy." Poppa passed on
when I was six and my heart
made silent promises.
Father had given me
to another German couple
who owned a saloon
and their house was
attached. That saloon
was the only reason

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Quantrill didn't burn
the house. I was 12
when Quantrill's Raiders
invaded Lawrence. I watched
— my heart in my eyes —
as dozens of men were
shot, gutted and scalped.
The hot Kansas sun shone
over the riddled body
of a kind saloon keeper.
The Raiders had attacked
other towns during
The Civil War; we expected
no mercy. Quantrill snarled,
"This town is full of
living dead men." Eighty wives
30
became widows that day. I
was forced to pour
drinks; homes and businesses
were in flames. Two
Raiders on horses chased
a stranger on foot; the man
was about to die. Running,
I screamed, "Please
don't kill him; he is mine!
I'm an orphan and he is
my only brother!" Throbbing,
the town rebuilt. It's been
six years since that
remarkable introduction,
and tomorrow
we're getting married.
The Passion - Albert Huffstickler

Before you were born

Before you were ever born
Before your first memory

Debra, at work,
showing me red maple leaves:
they vibrated
in the palm of her hand

Entering this world

is like being electrocuted.
Later, you forget
but somewhere beneath the surface
the shock lingers

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which is why Red maple leaves
certain peak experiences in a small brown hand
are shot with unbearable pain.
We learn to live sparingly, before you were born
always alert for the sudden jolt, before you were ever born
the crucifixion of the red maple leaf. before your first
It's not death we fear: (and only)
it's the shock of transition. memory.

Love is a red maple leaf.

Love is remembering where you
came from.
Love is the shock of transition.
Love is continuing to care
when the current jolts through you
from Rattle, Summer 2000, Los Angeles CA

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ISSN 0197-4777

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