2004

February

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, Volume 25, #2

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean, Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest. Walt Whitman

WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream

Volume 25 Number 2 Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher Thomas Perry, Admirable Factotum *February, 2004

c o n t e n t s
Ida Fasel 4-5 Simon Perchik 6-7 John Grey 8-9 Patricia Wellingham-Jones 10-11 Jeanne M. Whalen 12-14 Geoff Stevens 15 Joanne Seltzer Richard Kostelanetz Bill Roberts David Michael Nixon Robert Cooperman 16 17 18-20 21-22 23-28

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 envelope. Waterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127 2004, Ten Penny Players Inc. *(This magazine is published 11/04) http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

More Then Meets the Eye Ida Fasel

As God prepared the world for the world quelling the oceans, giving gilly atoms the notion to leave for land, seeding violet, bluet, veronica, daisy to flourish where they feel, there was much to ponder and create the function of trees, favorable air and much to test and eliminate: the mammoth mammoth, the poisonous gases, the almost-man.
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Time toted up stars, galaxies, fern imprints on stone. On the sixth day, he had to get the clumsy bird off ground, to size the animals to a fitting place. When he finally got man to stand upright, did he anticipate how late it was? For first man lifting himself to his feet a special wonder fireflies 9 layers deep in fields of midnight blue. Nobody had it better.
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Simon Perchik
All night the sun wider and wider. Until I heard my name nothing lives, like in that lake where before the sword rises you hear its name from your warm neck its kiss growing larger. I hardly recognize the light or my name breathing already begins to count
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 until I hear my name your voice had no arms no eyes I feed on a voice that follows from the womb calling as each mother calls a word different surrounded by all others these walls and your shadow roll in my mouth without the swallowing only a whisper and Earth pulling itself out heard its name.
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Second Honeymoon John Grey

I wake you, to remind you that were older. I think that frees you, knowing youre nearer death than yesterday. It excuses the weaknesses in me. It cures some old sicknesses. Were no longer compelled by anything. We can lie back here, on fancy hotel sheets, do nothing more than wait. We walk along the beach. As soon as we leave some place, the waves wipe our presence clean. All around us, terns pop tiny crabs like pills. Pelicans devour cheek-loads of fish.
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We feel like what comes for the terns and pelicans, what comes for us. Were not tired any more. Sure, we cant do what we used to but we can do this, whatever it happens to be. Forty years of great drama, so why not another twenty taking our bows. I buy you an ice-cream, and you suck it down slowly like its your last. You kiss me on the cheek so I can feel the change in your lips. The places we go to are already what they will be like when were not here.
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Colonoscopy Patricia Wellingham-Jones

Camera mile deep inside my body, I lie on my left side, eyes on the screen. Boosted by Versed and Demerol I slide along slick pink walls. With the camera I swing around a deep bend, swirl in tiny swoops of the lens,
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ride joyously among luscious rosy cavern walls. I want to reach out, trail my fingers along the glistening convolutions, hear myself giggle at a dizzying dip. Later, when the surgeons smiling voice proclaims everythings normal I think in my drifting way this colon hasnt been so clean since I was a four-month fetus.
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Shrapnel and Brandy Jeanne M. Whalen

After a while I forgot to feel the chill of the brandy bottle against my thigh. Every evening. 7:45. Big Ben stirs me from my rounds and the brandy bottle disappears from a downstairs cabinet, mocking the ether. It slips easily beneath my skirts as I smile along shadowy hallways past teeming rooms of beds and men.
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My Irish soldier is proud of the six-inch cavern in his leg that once housed angry metal and now gapes arrogantly in spite of all weve done. He waits with radiance. Even in the doorway I catch my breath, my heart spicing my speeding blood. He hides his pain well from his curtained roommates and a glaring room, bare walls, white sheets blushing from his weeping wound,
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his dark hair never weary of standing on end. I hold his sturdy hand as he puts the bottle to his lips, gratitude spilling from his Irish eyes: When I go to America, Love, youll be all the beauty I ever need

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Geoff Stevens
Oh for our shared inches before filthy metrification raised its ugly baseline its ruffian revolutionaries stormed the Imperial measurements of England

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Public Places Joanne Seltzer

I wet the chair. Im 15 or 50 or almost 90 in this nursing home/hotel where I didnt quite make it to the toilet but my bladders still full with a question the chair, what will I do with the chair? Everyones laughing pretending not to notice that puddle shaped like a lake of tears.
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First published in Barbeque Planet

Richard Kostelanetz LuMineScent PeeRed ActOr InItIAte ImpLore MassAge InHaBitAnts

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For the Sake of My Voice Bill Roberts

Back before I understood what gonads were for, I was blessed with a lovely soprano. I sang each Sunday in the all-boys choir at wonderfully resonant St. Pauls. Often I sang solos, the voice of an angel, rising , floating to the top of the cathedral. Most older boys in the choir envied me, their voices having cracked in puberty.
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I asked Choirmaster after rehearsal one afternoon if my beautiful voice also would creak and crumble one sad day, like those of my envious friends in choir. He said, Oh, assuredly it will, when nature took its devious course it undoubtedly would, unless, unless . . . and he whispered some words in my ear that I failed to understand, so I asked that he repeat those same words a second and third time so Id recall.
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At home I whispered in my fathers ear That I wanted to buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, and he whacked me a good one to the chops, causing, as Ive accused him so often, my beautiful soprano voice to crack, although avoiding the risk of a delicate surgery.

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The Grey Hands David Michael Nixon

You remember the grey hands on the edge of morning, how they slowly grew light in the March air as they scattered pollen to greet the dawn. In your mind, there is beauty all around them and they move in harmony with beauty; the truth of the grey hands is with you
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and you are longing to join them, to walk in beauty in your own place far from the colored canyons and sacred mountains. There is beauty in cat, crow and fountain, in snow and in grass under the snow, in dandelion and gargoyle, natures beauty and the sometimes beauty humans have layered over it in their dreadful haste to reshape the world.

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The Coldest Place Robert Cooperman

As we hike this stifling summer trail, we argue about the coldest inhabited spot in the country: half wishful thinking humidity as heavy as a stew pot lid half the desire to find something special in the places weve lived and loved.

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Mount Washington, New Hampshire, Barry insists, smashed by winds, he brags like a weatherman in the middle of an apocalyptic blizzard, in excess of two hundred miles an hour. We pause and pant like hounds run in circles by a fox.

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Gunnison, Colorado, I assert, cold air always sinking to the icy foot of a valley, so the most frigid temperatures on record, year in, year out.

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Back and forth we go, facts giving way to mad claims in our fevered enthusiasm, sweats miniature thunderstorms tornadoed up by our too-busy mouths and the endless, soggy uphill trail.

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But I get my legs back by recalling my first Gunnison winter: my ice-spiky mustache and beard, air so cold my head ached as if a frost demon had tapped me with one mischievous finger.

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What I wouldnt give for that playful touch right now.

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