waterways: poetry in the mainstream volume 24 number 7

7/28/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream volume 24 number 7

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, July 2003

My fathers fears

follow me like my own.I dont even knowtheyre not minetill, trying to move them,I discover inside mea small boy clinging to them

with all the love and loyalty and desperationthat only small boysseem able to muster.

A l b e r t H u f f s t i c k l e rfrom My Fathers FearsWaterways, July 91


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 24 Number 7 July, 2003Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara FisherThomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

c o n t e n t s

Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $33 for 11 issues.Sample issues $3.50 (includes postage).

Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelopeWaterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127

2003, Ten Penny Players Inc. (This magazine is published 7/03)

http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

Joy Hewitt Mann 4-5David Michael Nixon 6-8Ida Fasel 9-11Paul Grant 12-14Geoff Stevens 15Sheryl L. Nelms 16

Felicia Mitchell 17-18Susanne Olson 19-20Hugo De Sarro 21-22Jon Petruschke 23-25Patricia Wellingham-Jones 26-27


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The Last Word Joy Hewitt Mann

That last day at the cottage, my father

hands in lake water, forehead tied with a bright bandana, hiscupped palms sailing into view toward another argument,always ready to contradict my every sound, downto meet the upswing, the conclusionbroken into beads of water as he splashed me playfully.

It was his last word, this spray of water,my angry answer forgotten in the squeal of surprise.

Within our house whatever he said waswhat it was. Hes righteven when hes wrong written in my mothers hand

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every day. In adulthoodI have examined our summer photographs and I squeal in surpriseat the sudden cold splash of anger angry now

after all these years.The camera shows his hand on my shoulder, myforced smile, the misleading signs of bright eyes and healthy skin, the on the wall behind us,

but not the soft place under the ear; the roar

of blood,the final argument won.

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Basketball Colors David Michael Nixon

Red is the color of my own fresh blood

in the morning on the court;thats the cut your nails have raked.

January snow lies whiteoutside the Arnett Yand dirty grey piled by the curb.

On the court, I have no mercyfor myself or my opponents,but lick the blood from my hand

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and wipe my hand on my gym trunks,then go on running the court, foulinghard when someone beats me with a forearm

or a good move to get openfor a shot. Ive been threatened, butnot badly hurt, and last week, no one

got shot when Ernie was attackedby a guy with a knife, who came back,

with his father as backup, toget back at Ernie and his buddiesfor a fight the week before. Ernieheld him and the knife off till Todd

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jumped up with his hand in a gym bagand said he had a gun; that got the guywith the knife to stop, though Todd never

pulled a gun from the bag. Betweenarguments, fights and fouls, weplay some ball week after hard week.

Freedom is the color of an old bruisefading from purple to yellow.

Or of a good run without fear.

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He Went Thataway Ida Fasel

Paths. Paths, paths! Chosen for him or by him: the Hague,

London, Paris, England again, back to family and Hollandagain; failing as an art dealer, bookseller, theologystudent, missionary to coal miners on the French-Belgianborder. At last the people of that impoverished regiongave him subjects that brought out his drawing skills.Almost 30, he declared full-time commitment as an artist.His brother Theo bore the burden the rest of his life.

He began his career with a rented room near his by nowexasperated family. A visitor found it as untidy as he was

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filled with scraps collected on walks around the countryside grass, plants, driftwood, stuffed birds, old tools, old clothes,wooden shoes, and 30 different birds nests. His whole heart,

he wrote Theo, was in la nichee et les nids the nestedand the nests. Little havens like the peasant houses ofLa Borinage, tight, gritty, secure: a home of his own! He hadtwice failed as a suitor. Lowly Sien (Better a bad one thannone at all) came with her brood of one to the room he hadprepared, her stay short. Who could live with Vincent long?

He met his needs of shelter, love, home with paintingsof nests like still lifes arranged indoors. There are at leastfive, all done tenderly. They are of various sizes, exquisitein their precision, intricately simple, perfect as only the

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idealized is, yet just as in nature they actually are objects of beauty and use. The woodland tones are subdued.Bare branches let a subtle luster through. Delicate brushwork

threads the borders with glints of red and green, yellow ochre,pale apricot. In the lining of leaf and moss lay the eggs.

This path held.

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Black Dog Blue Paul Grant

His stepfather, permanent as jazz, will have to paint

the floor again once his night patrols nails clickingthe current coat of brown away chip by chip, steps soundinglike mice foraging in the kitchens bags and tinbins empty as stepfathers heart is of light magicnow that the current set of three deaths has sunkits tiny needles in his heart are done and hes again

chasing and splitting his tennis ball open to letthe bounce out. Daddy (the stepfathers name his realsires unknown, and this ones loved him always, needs him nowmore than ever) is thinking Tile Red for the new coat,except it looks a little too much like dried blood.

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So he guards the cabin while Daddys running the days offup and down the valley, pretending

to be looking for work, but actually looking (the sentry knows,despite a constitutionally short attention span) for peaceof some sort that doesnt even know it exists because till its found, it doesnt and when Daddy comeshome, smiling sadly, having failed again, but with new clues,they go for their afternoon walk down the hill

past all the brave, stupid things that bloomed this monthand already are dropping their petals, to the gun cluband back, to the scratched bare floors waitingto bleed and dry while dog and man are asleep.

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Music makes mystery manageable. They listen to windin the trees until it gets so they only notice it

when it stops. And then the piano holds courton memories of nights Daddy thought would never end,though now he knows they did, and this is whatis left of them. Dog brings Daddy his pen,and enough paper to write a thousand wills dispensing the ten thousand things to the friends

wholl need them when this is over and goes backto sleep. His colors run after rabbits, andhe whimpers with something like knowledge that nomatter how well he does his sacred job, hell wake up alone.

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My fathers fear was death, Geoff Stevens

and his fathers fear before him.

Death was the end of it,the forever silenceand I was made sure of that in the morgue,where they had tried to find outwhat had been wrong with him,a thing they never thought to dowhen he was alive,and could have told them.

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Friendship Club Sheryl L. Nelms

thirty-seven years agotwelve of them

closed their membership

didnt want changeno new people

today the rules are the sameand their club

still belongs

to the threeleft

alive

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Dulce Felicia Mitchell

My son is studying war.

He scavenges our shelves for mementoesthat he will never find,not one handwritten memoir or cold medal.Pulling his grandpas large-print anthologyof the best-loved poems of the American peopleoff the shelf, he looks at me and I spell Owen.

O-w-e-n, whose soldiers are doomed.What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?At the supper table he mouths the words,eyes wide with the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

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And we find another poemin my old Norton anthologya poem whose solders are bent double,

knock-kneed, and clumsy.Quick, boys! Owen said to them,all but one strapping his helmet on in time.

In the other room, CNN reports a raid on a cell.A little farther north, a President prepares for war.

Read the footnote, I say to my son,who in six years will be old enough to diea death obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud of vile.

Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.And each slow dusk, a drawing-down of blinds.

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Father Susanne Olson

Last visit in freedomunfettered by IVs dripping into reluctant veins

not yet darkened by the cloud of final suffering.Sun-speckled forests shelter our walksa bejeweled lake carries us in glittering armsembrace, the placid shore holdsmeals for us to sharefanned by shade-trees soothing breeze

surrounded by fragrant meadows golden bloom.We stroll through the cobblestone streetsof our ancient town, arm slung aroundaffectionate arm, sip bitter-sweet espressofrom tiny chocolate-colored cups, perchedon narrow sidewalk-caf chairs.

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We savor the warm summer dayslast hours of bliss, like loversgiven a respite before inevitable partingpeaceful dream soon to be brokenby ends dull ache.

These days are but a tokena glimpse, a taste of what life shouldhave been. His busy lonely years gone byand settled, he shows the love he no doubt

always felt but kept inside, buried underthe sorrow of a troubled life.Death, beckoning from the near futuregives me the father I have longed foryet rarely known, and days of harmonyjoy to be forever treasured.

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Roadkill Hugo De Sarro

Raccoons in their furry coats

curled soft and unconcernedin peaceful slumber on the roadside.Opossum playing dead a final time;cuddly hares and pungent skunksscattered like childrens toys,and now and then a crimson splash,guarded by stately, red-beaked crows,to mark the spot of unwily foxand wandering deer.

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There isnt room enough for old and new.These furtive pawns of progress, no longer

a needed link in the evolutionary chain,exist only when lifeless and litteredon the barren shoulder of the highway,where past and present meet.

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Fronters Jon Petruscke

Fronters at the gym look like theyre struggling when

theyre not,and nonchalant when they are.Fronting hides vulnerabilities.Fronting is a part of the chemical make-up oftestosterone.Fronting is slang.Using the word fronting is fronting.Its still fronting when your front is to claim not to befronting.Frontings as human as you can get.

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All psychological defense mechanisms are fronts.Animals front only when theyre frightened by apotential threat.

Malls are good places to buy fronts.Humans are almost never not fronting.Front is a derivative of first, primary, initial.A lot of people who live in cities are fronters.A lot of people who live in the countrydo so because they dont want to become fronters.

The opposite of fronting is authentic and directcommunication.Im fronting by suggesting I know the solution tofronting.Sometimes a persons front is all we know about them.

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Fronts thrive on others, less effective, fronts.Fronts squash intimacy.Flirting is fun fronting.

Some believe frontings the result of Adam and Evestemptation.Im fine is usually fronting.Sex is the advertising businesses front.Politicians are huge fronters.The onset of chronic fronting usually coincides with adolesce

Sometimes fronts run so deep you cant find your way out.

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Dust to Dust, Ashes to Ashes Patricia Wellingham-Jo

Its been that kind of dreadful week.

Nothing, of course,compared to the bloodsoaking Iraqi sand,bodies tumbled from Twin Towers,the slaughter in our streets.

Just an old poetwho lived outher useful time.Still, the death of my frienddiminishes me.

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Bare-handed I grubin the garden, tuck zinnias

in an empty space,remove spent bloomsfrom the purple butterfly bush,prune, water and weed.

Rubbing tears with earth-

stained fingers off cheeksred from too much sunI find comfort indirt to dirt.

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waterways: poetry in the mainstream volume 24 number 7

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