Waterways:

2002

Poetry in the Mainstream

September

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, September 2002 Will my poem be red to thee?

Carlo Pittore "Valentine to Greenwich Village"

WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream

Volume 23 Number 8 Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher Thomas Perry, Admirable Factotum September, 2002

Joy Hewitt Mann Will Inman Gertrude Morris Susanne Olson Joanne Seltzer

4 5-7 8-9 10-11 12-15

Sylvia Manning Terry Thomas Bill Roberts Geoff Stevens Herman Slotkin

c o n t e n t s
16 17-19 20 21 22-23

David Michael Nixon 24 John Grey 25-26 Nancy Henry 27 Dan Lukiv 28-30 Albert Huffstickler 31-32

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 2002, Ten Penny Players Inc. http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

Louis Reyes Rivera reading at Bank Street Bulkhead (1981)

Who have names for words pulled out of cast iron days for trauma bent into straight lines for icy winds in breaking glass; we have words to cool the tribal heat to close the holes in wormy brains to fill the empty space.

We Are Poets Joy Hewitt Mann

We know the names the words to raise the dead to burn the faces of the sane. We raise the names and burn the words into your minds.

Summer 1938-39. I was fifteen and sixteen, just before entering Duke autumn of 39. spent time exploring Burnt Mill Creek, which divided Forest Hills, an area my busy father developed for wealthy Wilmingtonians.

Deep in Under, Out in Air - Will Inman

Id take along my butterfly net, shirt hanger strung round with an old gauze curtain and fixed to a mop pole. I caught tiger, zebra, blue, greenclouded swallowtails, yellow sulphurs,
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dog faces, monarch and queen butterflies, fritillaries, buckeye, red admiral, comma, and questionmark anglewings, skippers, red-spotted purples, wood nymphs, hair streaks. At the creek, Id dip into current or up under the banks, for eels, small cats, suckers, and in the flow for dace, gambusias, and even small jack and perch. Once in awhile I snagged a mud turtle or alligator turtle. Even then, I knew to look both under and out, took decades before I learned, frogwise or with salamanders to crouch waters edge,
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half vision under and half outward-without catching or killing living creatures. That world, even September 1939, was so alive and beautiful. I barely suspected it was already mine, along with a larger shadow, deep in under, wanting to surf air with words. Took even longer to learn to watch and longer yet to know without needing to grab on.
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Insomnia - Gertrude Morris Like a white dream in the darkness the snow is falling as if forever

a silent poem in praise of the small arctic below my window

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a benediction drifting soft as down. Each flake becomes a multitude lost at the only moment of its least life its fresh death.
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Snow-feathering narcotic calls me back to sleep a childs profound and perfect sleep dreamless as milk pure as the snow before it drifts to gray litter to black water.

Part of my life, flowing from the center of my soul, does my poem embody substance? Is it worth attention?

Poems Test - Susanne Olson

Is my outpour too wordy, the waterfalls roar drowning the wildflowers song? Too enigmatic, dreams mere shadow? Too fragmentary, skeleton instead of flesh and blood? Incongruous, a puzzle whose pieces dont quite fit?
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Do my words sing the flutes pleasing melody, or is my tune a halting stutter of the dumb? Does it lack polish like the rough-hewn gem?

When is my verse perfect, round and lustrous like the princesss golden ball, retrieved in the lowly frogs wide mouth, the gentle hand of the enchanted prince, from the depth of lifes dark well?
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The truth enhances art you said. Ed, though weve drifted apart and though your heart which has coupled and uncoupled with my heart

Another Valentine Joanne Seltzer

belongs only to you I love you enough to offer you my pain again. Can we grow art without pain?

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Do you rave? Today is full Beauty lives forever, still

Broken Hearts - Joanne Seltzer

of sentiment and innuendo. the ugly truth must long continue. Red or white, new grapes for wine wont grow until another season. Forgive, sweetheart, this valentine: not all that rhymes becomes a poem.
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Do you rant? Oh, I enjoy Call me bitch. In reality,

words that sting like a stolen kiss. the night, the sullied night, is his. I keep you as my favorite lover, but never will I stop the other.

This Valentine - Joanne Seltzer Im sending me this valentine that says Im my own woman.

It wont come with a red heart. It wont come with chocolates. It wont come with flowers. Flowers wither like passion. Chocolates create blemishes. Red hearts play games of true or false.

And it says I still believe in the healing art of love in spite of evidence. all things love the things they kill.

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For You - Joanne Seltzer given rhythm rhyme and fourteen lines to make love to given time to get the rhyme right

what can I do tonight but write another silly valentine for you?

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To Be a Fool for Love - Sylvia Manning The prose we loved when we were young when we might yet indeed believe in language, its beauty: this prose is poetry now. How can it otherwise be found? abstract tool, pieces of sound?

Who but a poet would dare to love it,

first published in Hyde Park Poets, Pecan Press, October, 2001 16

Valentine Heart Frayed at the Fold - Terry Thomas I guess February is short because its a cupid month. Before you even have a chance to check your blood pressure its time to put all those hearts piling up over the years for luck, maybe, or health. Found one from for wear from rattling around in my trunk,
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away the red cardboard sentiments. I save mine a time when my heart beat from a different kind of emotion. It was a devotion message, worse

from a girl, really, from a seventeen year old, from Shirley. I was too old; her family thought my pulse rate was at a dangerous level, never thinking about hers, and they session with her dad. But she would look in my eyes, hold my wrist to feel my life was too shy to say. Then lovers month arrived, and that day significantly in the exact middle, She gave me
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never trusted me even after a heart-to-heart throbbing, and I could see everything she

a card with words printed by a stranger, by a company that profits on hearts and emotions, but shed written two short I gave Shirley something Id been saving and we fit together like two pieces of curved red. The ink has faded but I can still make out the lines and for just such a day for twenty one years, and simple words at the bottom: Love Forever,

remember, but does forever last forty years?

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After reading this poem, my father, as he always did with everything I asked him to read,

The Critic - Bill Roberts

searching for the right words, finally looking up at me, though not releasing his chin, and asked, quite predictably,

would have thought long and hard, studiously

stroking his smooth-shavin chin, pondered and ahemmed,

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to my never-ending annoyance, But is it literature?

first published in Midwest Poetry Review, January 2000 (as Bartlett Boswell)

Are These Red Enough? Geoff Stevens Are these red enough, my raw red words, fighting to be born, my unsaid thoughts shot down on bleeding sidewalks because I hesitate to utter them, lest they be unworthy, lest you laugh and turn away?

At least look at me, see me smile, see my mouth, my heart is in there, somewhere. Hear it, though it dare not speak, until it is sure that you already know, the words.
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Outdoor Art Show - Herman Slotkin Im out on the sidewalk fishing for possibilities. On the wrought iron fence, my stuff is on the line but artfully out of line so each can claim its personal share of being.

Yet, as I sit in my chair shaded by my wifes umbrella, I see the commonalities my subjects, my designs. Will anyone see they are so mine?
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The fat-assed woman in the peach capris is studying Flowers in a Blue Haze. She will walk to me in deliberate calm to say, Where are your pictures hanging? That puts me down, cuts the price. The fat-assed woman in the peach capris turns to me sharply. She says: Flowers in Blue Haze is perfect. Theres a wall at home Ill see Flowers every day Will you take a check? Smart, stout lady, I will! I will!
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The Red Gingko - David Michael Nixon See the red gingko hover in wind above the off-grey concrete sidewalk, while vision offers strange visions This is the universe of feeling, in a whole Crayola sweep of colors. whose slightest breath was all you felt at school. Pray you enjoy it before it fades
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or vaporizes, lost to age or death.

The Sick Wife - John Grey Obey the signs call them love, that move you on from suffering, in early spring, like a steep slope the melting a compensation for the slipping with a message
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and maybe a blood red bird

from the horizon

and a bandaged heart stirring the edge

how these others know to stop eating, to slip out of as you do greasy newspaper armor, to remember dancing and, with a warm goodby-less look,

unlatched by sudden wings; how about a finger or two of a thawing pond, into shining; and maybe deadening the nerves

or shocking the face veins a moment with

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forge small victories from the quelling of your turbulent eye.

The Nuer people say once Stomach dwelt in the bush some distance from Man unobtrusive, meek happy to be thrown a few grasshoppers from time to time. Stomach was such a mild companion so sweet to visit

Cautionary Tale - Nancy A. Henry

so good a listener Man invited Stomach to join his body.

Since that time Stomach has been a never-ending source of torment.

27

Be careful who you hook up with, some folks can be hard to shake.

Not Just Another Day - Dan Lukiv In a cloud Of French fry-pollen, Amidst the cry of sizzling meat Like hissing cats or snakes, She, Black-haired, Plain-haired, Presses, Just inside the back door, Against his unwhite apron
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Her slender body inside simple clothes; Her lips, His lips, Busy, Desperately busy Arms not merely around Each other, But rope-tied

Lard and tooth-missing Customers.

They are elsewhere, Or perhaps they are nowhere else: How can I really know? They are blind to me, To my tired smile that fades Suddenly as I, Paying my bill, Must leave, For fear of watching The lips part, The arms untie,

Eyes closed: These two are not just inside a Time-kicked door. They are beyond this ecstasy And this $2-caf of

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The eyes open.

In my rust-cancered Olds, I hurry home, My nose, my lungs, blind To tetracarbonBlood. I find my wife tired Beside boiling cabbages. She, Curious, frowning, Tired, Eyes me.

I approach. I breathe deeper for more air. I feel the numbness of my Arm- and leg- tentacles. I feel tears Like oyster-sand Squeezed into my eyes. She holds me Closer than usual, And I Wont let go.
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Autumn Song - Albert Huffstickler Its a time of people gone: Helen, the street dancer, dead, Melvin, old black man in the neighborhood almost as long as meoddjobbing to extend his monthly check. Hes diabetic too, has a foot infected, may have to have it off, Pete the barber says. No more scouring the neighborhood for yard work. It was his neighborhood too even though he lived somewhere else, showed up on the bus
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every morning to be fed his morning coffee by Stephanie at the bakery. I couldnt understand half he said, it was mostly about work or the lack of it. So hes gone another one of those fringe people, not someone you focus on, more like seen from the corner of your eye, hardly noticing till theyre gone. Its autumn today, the first chilly grey day weve had, and Helens gone and Melvin and dont forget mad Anthony

who talks to the air and bums change for beer, his smell a menace that youre glad to buy off. Autumn. People gone, the earths immense sorrow exemplified by the loss of her strays. The wind mourns, the grey air troubles the trees and our thoughts and something in us is grievingfor Helen, Melvin, Mad Anthony but most of all ourselves.
32 first published in Nerve Cowboy & Pariah Press

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