Waterways:

2002

Poetry in the Mainstream

November

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, November 2002

I love your winding streets not yet devoured by skyscrapers or grid-lock traffic.

Emma Landau, "Greenwich Village"

WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream

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

Geoff Stevens David L. DeGolyer Hugo E. DeSarro Ida Fasel Angela Sblendorio Joanne Seltzer

c o n t e n t s
4 5-6 7 8-11 12-13 14

Peggy Raduziner 15-17 Bill Roberts 18-20 Dan Lukiv 21-25 Lyn Lifshin 26 Albert Huffstickler 27-28

If it has to be skyscrapers Geoff Stevens If it has to be skyscrapers, let them be the 38 storeys of Black Rock or have the corner-wrapping windows of the Majestic with its Art Deco twin tower brickwork by Rene Charibellan looking out over Central Park, but until then, or otherwise, let it be the little winding streets, the little winding streets.
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Incredible Inedible You David L. DeGolyer Like an eyeless monster of metal and glass that stands on concrete feet, the city eats the world an acre at a time, stretching its steepled spine and swollen belly across the land. Piece by piece the meal grows for this ravenous beast,
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But there you stand in its shadow, undaunted, determined to survive, to thrive, with your shops, your simple street, your electric eclectic ways that bang a bold signal you will not, cannot be consumed.
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as it gorges itself on earth and tree and sky, even on simple things like the peaceful pace of days gone by.

Behind the garage, bowed it trembled.

Starving Dog - Hugo E. DeSarro

as if in shame, on tottering legs I looked with others in a circle, feeling the pain of furrowed ribs and skin-tight spine, of the bell, they ran.

To die alone, unseen is death wasted and most hideous. What dog? she said. And when I tried next door, Its not mine! And shut the door. And I knew in my childs heart, All deaths are not equal or the same.
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and stayed when, at the ringing

Very Rich Hours Ticking In My Head Ida Fasel We walked. We walked in curiosity and the hidden opened up to us. We bruised on cobblestones in narrow twisted streets. We walked in the light of worshipful days. We walked in the dark and never thought danger. Boston was the great house whose rooms my best friend and I, its poor relations, could roam freely, whose royal park stretched out its miles to subway, El and bus. We rented bikes when we could afford them we were still in school. The sky might be grimy grey when we started out,
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To know a place is to be/ That place Wallace Stevens

We walked. We lingered, we stopped to explore. We abandoned ourselves to what we liked in what was there, let passers-by think what they would of our chatter and enthusiasms. Before glass burst from towers and showered Copley Square, we gathered from derelicts reposing on the stone lap of the old Public Library
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but it was pewterly luminescent to our plans. We moved, not in weather, but in vital moments of the past that made themselves present. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was our Olympus. On Saturday the gods came down for a meeting. In the Parker House lobby we watched for Emerson.

chapters for novels fed in gusts to the east wind. Before ethnics, West Enders sitting outside their shops offered us chairs at the first sign of a limp, or an extra cookie if we bought.

At Walden pond we were Thoreaus sisters bringing him staples for his frugal week. In Quincy we read the memorial on the church wall. If we could be incomparable Abigail Adams, her husbands best friend and dear friend!

In Temple Street we sat on the visitors couch and heard a master teacher question small scholars.
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MR. ALCOTT. Why does time seem to be destroyed while we talk? EMMA. Because we are not thinking of time. LUCIA. Because we are in eternity.

You are now somewhere out of time altogether, Ruth Snell. Are you finding room to room in those many mansions sufficient unto themselves answers to the great questions we wondered wandering crystal atmosphere we had a delicate share in that shaped forms perfectly pitched to our feelings? We mapped immensity of soul when Boston streets were safe and sacred. We walked. We walked.
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from The Difficult Inch, 2000

Wangled An Invitation Angela Sblendorio She waltzed into the room at the gallery like a silver colored moth and played it for what it was worth. I wangled an invitation seemed shallow and crass But what could she do? She handed the artist her work and turned over her heart. So much hope, too much to load onto one man. Figured tomorrow
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tonight would be forgotten and then shed write something new. Walked to the piers on the West Got blisters on the way to Canal. Fell in a heap at the back of the Used Book Caf. And as she slept All the energy of the writers whose work was around her filtered into her mind. This is the Village and this is why they all come. This is why we come.
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Nascent bunions killed me walking through the Village, baby number two balanced on my bladder.

Antebellum New York Joanne Seltzer

As I sipped a Manhattan in some smoky striptease joint baby number two practiced her belly-kick.
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The things we didnt know in 1955: secondhand smoke can kill, booze causes birth defects.

Small wonder then in 1956 baby number two screamed that the world sucks.

One day I got caught trying to pet the cat through the gate, which suddenly opened. A stout, good-natured woman was smiling at me. She said, I see you like cats. Would you like to come in?

At the corner of 8th Street past Fifth Avenue stood a private house on green grounds, gated all around.

Country Corner Peggy Raduziner

I stepped onto her property. As we walked around, she told me she taught sculpture in wood, clay and metal. Then she asked if I would like to join the beginners class on Saturday afternoons.

I was delighted and came with my cousin, who loved to model statues out of clay. I whittled small animals from wood and sculpstone. Dorothea Denslow taught me how to do it properly.
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We started in June, and through the summer and fall we worked outdoors.

When winter came, we worked inside, in a large studio workroom on the ground floor of Dorotheas beautiful house. Her cats and dog were smart and knew not to step on our work or eat any of the chips that fell on the floor.

But they made themselves at home in the other rooms curling up on the high-back chairs, rubbing against curio cabinets, shedding hairs on the oriental rug, and sleeping in front of the fireplaces. The cats posed like sculpture in the sun on the sills of lace-curtained windows. Everything seemed to be going well, but as years went by Dorothea was unhappy. We never knew why. She often was in her nightgown and housecoat when we came, as if she wasnt feeling well.
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Many students went there to complete their work. Since it was just a fun hobby for us, my cousin and I didnt follow them.
th

One day, she told us she had sold the place and was moving uptown. We were shocked heartbroken. She explained that she would be teaching th at the Sculpture Center, a new building on 69 Street.

Squeezing each others hand same thoughts in mind we watch two boys playing handball against the brick wall.

As for 8 Street now, if it could, it would cry. Dorothea Denslows Clay Club is gone. A large white apartment house took its place. We look up with awe and the height whenever we walk past.

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who taught me how to get on a packed subway car I saw on the platform beneath the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn Heights that first morning I attempted and nearly failed to get to work using the intimidating and overcrowded underground system. We had moved from The Village to the Heights just across the water to a bigger apartment for less rent, but a problem presented itself: I could no longer walk to work but had to ride the dreaded tube. The St. George stop was the last one in Brooklyn before the train plunged below the East River and emerged several minutes later in lower Manhattan, so the cars were stuffed with
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The Man Wearing Spats Bill Roberts

Brooklynites eager to get to work when one skidded to a noisy stop before me. The doors opened but humankind and none too kind, the way they leered at me blocked my path, so I let the doors slam shut again, missing half a dozen trains before I spotted the dapper elderly man wearing spats, carrying a furled umbrella, and wearing a perfect homburg to top off his gray pinstripe suit and chesterfield coat. As another train pulled up, I watched him: he folded his Journal, obviously a Wall Streeter himself, and when the train doors opened, he wielded his umbrella batonlike, rigid before him in both gloved hands, stiffened his resolve, bared his perfect teeth, and ran at the nearest opening, yelling something perhaps in Japanese as he made
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contact, forced the front line of humankind further into the train, then zipped himself safely in just as the doors closed, newspaper up again before his composed face. I was late that morning: I went back up to the Saint. G and purchased all the necessary accoutrements: a Wall Street Journal, furled umbrella and, of course, spats.

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Caracas, Venezuela: go down, down To cement, glass, and steel, Where spires gleam above Traffic-whine, tetracarbonClouds, and florescent shorts On camera-festooned tourists.

Bowls Beneath Leaks - Dan Lukiv

But above this arcade, Los Cerros cling to hillsides That rain churns into gravity-ravaged Muck:
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Steps become cataracts, and Garbage-toboggans race down River-filled gutters Like oysters down a throat,

And zinc-roofed homes of Rain-blackened boards or Flattened cans or Packing cases (This side up, some still read) Elbow for space and boast signs: Pego Cierres (I Put In Zippers), Cortes de Pelo (Haircuts), Se Venden Helados (Ice Cream Sold).

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Consider a sunny day: In one of 500 barrios (Some named after saints, Others after hope (El Progresso (Progress), Nuevo Mundo (New World), El Encanto (Delight))), A boys voice in a battered Loudspeaker cries out: Onions! Yuccas! Plantains! (In English?) Barter-quick poor close deals With this barter-quick child On his bent tailgate.

Nearby, A bow-spined man spray Paints a 23-year-old VW In an unpaved street A side-street packed hard by Foot and tire and sun But he releases the trigger To watch a long-chassis jeep Climb the 18% grade of a highway Called Si Dios Quiere (If God Wills). And in that jeep, Twelve passengers, with Knees crammed under chins,

Inhale each others odor. A fat lady guards a bag of tomatoes From too many feet. The driver, after spitting tobacco-gob Out his windowless door, Pampers the clutch with a good Place to stop; Two wild-haired women In tattered dresses Tumble out the back doors, And then the jeep Trails a water truck that Drips at a seam

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Like a bleeding soldier.

The two women enter A bodegas a green-paintPeeling-off-like-old-labels-onOld-cans home to a school, Pharmacist/doctor, And household items, like beer, For the poor.

Hill-rooted homes

Homes In which coffee and bland Arepa with jam are As common as babies,

No house numbers, No glass for barred-up windows, and No mailmen to pace the maze of Cramped walkways between

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Homes In which hospitality, In spite of armed robbery and suicide, Makes ranchitos warm for many Who often say, Estn en su casa. (Make yourselves at home.)

Ive seen the Howling color of Northern Lights invading Darkness Above the tree-spiked Black hills That separate my valley From yours.

Northern Lights Dan Lukiv

Ive seen the ribbons Not yellow or red, but white Like sun-filled windows So high up that No one Can get through. And so I ask: Is all this beauty For nothing?

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I was just off from work. Nothing on tv and Im in my haying underwear, an old ragged sweatshirt. Im smoking up a storm, had 2 or 3 beers, feel relaxed. Then theres a knock, knock and I go and its 2 Jehovah witnesses, a woman and a man and they say you want to let us come in, talk of religion.

He Said It Was a Saturday Morning Lyn Lifshin

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Im telling you my place is sparse. I get out a beach chair, a pillow. By the time th Im on my 5 Schlitz, I was real talkative, especially by th the 6 . Its 8 oclock. Im rambling, let me ask you this, let me ask you this, like Im doing a talk show. Finally by 9 they said, in a daze, can we go? and You dont want us to come back do you? and I said, yeah, I dont think so

stark love poem Albert Huffstickler starkly. I love you starkly, black and white no shading no soft edges Im your fundamentalist devotee your hair
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shirt love. you will wake in the night to raw black dark and my stark form etched on your bedroom wall
from Crimson Leer, 1996

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ISSN 0197-4777

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