Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
February
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
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
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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