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1999
20th
Annivers
ary
Octo
Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream
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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, October 199
The river is keen under blackness, weapon-malevolent,
crossed jagged marks mirrored against its steel.
from Night Flight : New YorkTheory of Flight (1935)
Muriel Rukeyser
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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 20 Number 9 October, 1999Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher
Thomas Perry, Assistantc o n t e n t s
Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $25 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (includes pos
Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelope. Waterways,
Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127
1999, Ten Penny Players Inc.
Will Inman 4-5
Joy Hewitt Mann 6-7
Phyllis Braun 8
Lyn Lifshin 9-10
James Penha 11-12Herman Slotkin 13
Geoff Stevens 14
David Michael Nixon 15-16
Joan Payne Kincaid 17
John Grey 18-19
Gerald Zipper 20Albert Huffstickler 21-24
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nightriver - will inman
to fly in above Manhattan...East River estuary
and Hudson flowing down upstate...The Lady
in the Harbor renewing our birth-promises...her
rivers run black with earth-blood.
lights
mark the island between rivers. i feel my own
chest in the breast of the plane leaning down
like a returning lover naked with space
and speedready to warm and be warmed in
welcome woke deep out of that darknight twinkling
flow, that ongoing birth-blood.
too high yet
and yet too swift to sense a million footsteps on
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pavement, to hear those strokes of footsoles
on sidewalks or underground
pacing for the trains.
how sudden that river leaps up whole into my body
that flow foetid and fat with death and dung
but still rhythmed with tidepull and still living truer
than sewers and brackish with darker ocean.
one last
turn around the tall Lady, o her shadow is a thirst,
a longing! while the plane sheers in, her wide wings
open with welcome, im
back on ground, now i
feel the dark beat of river down earth under me
13 October, 1998
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The Stone Boat - Joy Hewitt Mann
If I could lie in bed
like a stone boat on the bottom of the riverall concave and filled
with running water, so
there were no lines, no
demarcations between what was in
and what was surrounding me . . .
if my hands could fly up and fingers
ripple in the water like reeds
and tiny silver fish bloom
from their tips . . .
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I would feel the current
move me, but I could notbe moved.
I would
rest there
and you could never
touch me.
You could only float
or drown.
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Dirge - Phyllis Braun
Autumn is in Novembers no-mans land:
a season of gray skies, dry fields, and windthat sends leaves scudding like frightened mice,
shakes the bony limbs of naked trees,
rattles the door, shrieking and moaning at night.
This is devastation time, when age
has trashed our thoughts, our dreams of summer days.
An alien force behind the antic wind
we did not recognize in other years
is driving us into silent futile rage.
We cannot think or run, but only stare,
seeing at last the end that was always there.
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Mt McKinley and Wonder Lakes
Mt. McKinley National Park
Alaska 1947
Lyn Lifshin
light on the dark
snow. Nights
learning where the
stars were when
the caribou migrated
mirror lakes, the water
freezing for the long
winter. All life
connected to the breaking
and icing of water.
Their houses changedwith the stars
food they couldnt
carry, seal meat
and blubber, buried
in the cold
forgotten for years
until spirits in the
stars revealed the
meat to wandering heros
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Reading about the Floods
in North Dakota
Lyn Lifshin
I think how I
felt swamped,
as if Id lost
everything. What
mattered seemed
buried under water.
I was as wild as
someone looking
out at the water,
the buildings onfire no one could
get to, eerie as
Dresden in WW2.
Like those buildings,
something inside
smoldered, felt as
gutted and I think
now I was lucky
to get out
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Gravity of Things - James Penha
The moon inhales
tonight -- inspiration in reverse:it sucks the soul
from the shore and the field,
from the grass, the cypress.
This phase, no low
high tide,
aged Vincent
in his own time,
yielded Renfield
undead
forever.
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Hold that villa
steady;
triangulate all hands!
Tonight the rivers
flow upstream, tonight
the buds reope, tonight
the seeds yield fruit.
Hold the villa
steady. You are the keystone,
and I need to think:
It doesnt touch me,
this swirling eddy,
millennial adjustment.
Somehow you keep me
on the road
to the villa
still
after the storm
I remain
alone.
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Terezin - 1994 - Herman Slotkin
Arbeit Macht Frei- mordant greeting
to tourists sweating summer heat
radiant from fortress walls.Cells - nauseous with cellar damp,
houses - blocks of vacant slum,
the crematorium - a grand vault.
Summer sunlight through open windows
makes the oven a black barrel shadowagainst hospital-white tile walls,
highlighting a stainless gurney,
at its head a wood-block head-rest
creating the perfect anglefor extraction of cadaver teeth.
The air freezes ice- solid -
a freeze-frame that plagues my time.
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Swirling with hidden grimaces - Geoff Stevens
Swirling with hidden grimaces,
face blackened, knife in hand,
this is one angry commando.
Nothing will stop it tonight.
There will be no warning
as it creeps up in the darkness
and suddenly overpowers.
In the morning, all will be calm
and the land under ten feet of water.
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Mimes Song - David Michael Nixon
In the halls, the ferns sway slowly.
The parquet stone floors make no clatter.
Nothing can fathom whats the matter.
The old acquaintances grow bloody.
Donald tolls the fire gong,
tolling, tolling all night long
the gong, the gong of fire.
Southern plants are tall and spiky.
The earth turns over a lukewarm shoulder.
Armadillos roll themselves up tightly
and the sands shake till the whole beach shudders.
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Instantly, the melting swallows
bell, book and gallows,
till all are one melt river,
roiling forever.
The only song
is mimes song.
first published in Hunting the World, Foothills Publish
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If the Creek Dont Over-Flow - Joan Payne Kincaid
The journey winds down
from mouth to finish
tributaries jutting thru cities
and countries traveling toward climax;
usual bright dreams of birth
slowly maturing in planetary turns
swelling blue liquid imaginary contexts;
coursing thru valleys of leaping fulfillment
giving of itself to those in need
only to be dammed, captured,
losing perspective, polluted or eliminated...
fate of wild things...
observing their own demise.
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From the Fork in the Roads
John Grey
This is where the roads fork.
One road continues along the
low plains, the other diverges
up into the highlands.
The low plain road seems to cut
the grass-lands like a scythe.
The other though disappears
almost immediately in a forest
of sun-glazed pines.
Most follow that lower road,
predictable as its track may be.
It is not unromantic,
the scenery still stacks upon either side
vivid and spring-leaved,
passionately lit like Monet paintings.
But even as the eyes wander,
the body of the direction
rattles on ahead.
Even as it draws near the ocean,
its the cliff that seems to diverge
just a little to allow that path
to keep its straight and narrow.
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A few take to the upper trail however,
noting how the first thing it does
is change its shape
to adjust to the contours, the vegetation,
and, when that becomes so complex,so convoluted that it is no longer possible,
the second thing it does is cease to be.
On the low road, people get to where
theyre going.
On the high road, just being on the road itself
is the end point.
I could easily turn these roads
into something about us.
More than that, I could make one me
and one you.
And yet, here we are together,
although theres a brusque, relentless
aloneness tugging at us even as we love.
It is always inciting us
to deal with the roads.It doesnt understand how warm the kisses
how comfortable the fork feels.
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G. Washingtons Bridge - Gerald Zipper
Night string of diamonds
stretching across the hole in the air
Jersey Palisade to New York caissonabove the cabalistic river of inky blackness
Today Im going to die he said
drove his car to the middle of it
parked on it
walked to the side of it
climbed the rail to the edge of it
supplicant of the skyhe plummeted
rag doll tumbling
the bitter end of choice
leaving behind ones who must bear the pain of loss
and we cant fly.
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A Day at the Airport
Albert Huffstickler
This woman comes up andsays, I want to go to
Atlanta, and I say, That
will be seventy-eight
dollars one way, and
she says, I dont
have it but I can take
you to the moon, and
I say, If you can go
to the moon, why would
you want to go to
Atlanta? and she says,
I got to. My dogs
sick. Ill do anything,anything! And she
starts tearing off
her clothes and Im
just sitting there
watching her get nakedand then she climbs
over the counter, the
guy behind her gets
a real view, I mean a
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real view, and shes
sitting there on my
lap when the security
finally gets there andhauls her off, one of
them has her and the
other guys got her
clothes and shes still
yelling, I got to getto Atlanta! and the
crowds gathering and
all of them are muttering,
like, Why dont they
just let her go to
Atlanta and calling
them fascists and all
and shes still yellingwhen they hauled her
out the door. I never
saw her again. Well,
that was just Monday.
Would you like to hearabout Friday?
from Short F
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The Cure - Albert Huffstickler
We think we get over things.
We dont get over things.Or say, we get over the measles
but not a broken heart.
We need to make that distinction.
The things that become part of our experience
never become less a part of our experience.How can I say it?
The way to get over a life is to die.
Short of that, you move with it,
let the pain be pain,
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not in the hope that it will vanish
but in the faith that it will fit in,
find its place in the shape of things
and be then not any less pain but true to form.Because anything natural has an inherent shape
and will flow towards it.
And a life is as natural as a leaf.
Thats what were looking for:
not the end of a thing but the shape of it.Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life
without obliterating (getting over) a single
instant of it.
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ISSN 0197-4777
published 11 times a year since 1979very limited printingby Ten Penny Players, Inc.(a 501c3 not for profit corporation)
$2.50 an issue