WORDWRIGHTS #18 • July-August 2000 Edition • $5.95 US • $8.95 Canada
SPECIAL FEATURE:
ROBERT PINSKY INTERVIEW
The U.S. Poet Laureate, interviewed by WordWrights Contributing Editor Grace Cavalieri.
POETRY: Robin S. Chapman • Frances G. Connell • Ann Darr • Lisa A. Forrest • Carla N. Giammichele • Andrea Grill • Reginald Harris • K.F. Hastings • klipschutz • Robert Sargent • Dennis Sipe • Chezia Thompson Cager • Sharlie West • Ben Wilensky • A.D. Winans PROSE: John Bennett • Jodi Bloom • Peter Brown • Michael Darcher • Clara Stites THE EDITORS: A Sampling of Poetry and Prose by some of the many WordWrights Editors, including Joanna Biggar • Grace Cavalieri • Blair Ewing • Dora Malech • Richard Peabody • Rose SolariHOME
A Poem by ROBIN S. CHAPMAN
ORDER AND DISORDER MARRY
Order alphabetizes the spices and throws out
any cans of food that lack bar codes, grinds
freshly-roasted Jamaica Blue Mountain beans
for twelve seconds, filter-drips two pottery mugs,
adds heated half-and-half, frames and posts
the kitchen rule “If you use it, put it back;”
steps outside to cut a just-open tea rose, stays
to deadhead the overblown.
Disorder throws
the mail on last month’s pile of papers, photos,
bills, flyers for hot air balloon rides; smears
peanut butter on a bagel, spills orange juice
on the stove, rushes out to look for migrating
spring warblers, leaving the radio turned on loud
to mid-morning jazz, yesterday’s clothes,
wet towels and leaking toothpaste dropped
on the bathroom floor.
Order removes
the unused words from Disorder’s poetry
cluttering the refrigerator door and files the family
photos in the new album and goes out to dig up
Disorder’s yellow dandelions—and though
they work miles apart, Order remembers
a line of magnetic poetry; Disorder the taste
of freshly-brewed coffee, the blue ceramic glaze
and heft of the cup. The day brings them both
the crepe myrtle warbler, moving through.
A "Shard" of poetry/prose by JOHN BENNETT
FIRE IN THE HOLE
Fire in the hole. Love stories untold. Truth hemmed in by convenience, gelded in shrewd stipulation, wangled by faith or a vow or raw spite. The things we do to turn heads.
Fire in the hole. Fire in the potholes we pave over with asphalt, subterranean cauldrons of grief.
Ready on the left. Ready on the right. Ready on the firing line. Open fire. Fire at will. Fired at last and alone on the corner, waiting for the light to change.
All for one and once upon a time there was a way back home again. Pipe dreams in a non-smoking world. A howling arctic wind sweeping down thru the tundra, no one to listen but a scurrying titmouse.
Prose by PETER BROWN
POSING
I said, “I’m never doing this again,” when, for the last time, I rescued the blind man who had wandered into the middle of a traffic jam on F Street.
“I never asked for your help,” he said. But he came along with me anyway, dragging his plastic cane on the asphalt. I meant that I was finished jumping into things on the deep end, like I’d been doing ever since I met the blindman, who was a street vendor photographer.
Weeks earlier, I saw him out in traffic, turning in confusion from one blaring horn to another, pointing his flimsy cane at them like a lance. I went after him without thinking, only to be grazed by a car that screeched at my heels.
“Whoa! What am I doing,” I said when I reached him, and I clung to the blind man as hard as he clung to me.
“God help us,” he said, and it was like hauling a wide-load to get him to the curb.
“Goddam,” I panted, and I grabbed the nearest bench like it was a life raft. My ears were still ringing with car horns when he said, “Get out of line here on F Street, and they’ll run you down. But they pay you fellas a fortune to march to their tune, don’t they?”
“Not really,” I said. “There’s no money in publishing.”
“Newspapers?”
“No, it’s a trade mag. Modern Waste Management. I’m on the production end.” I nodded at the camera that hung from his neck and said, “I need something more creative, like photography.”
He sat himself down on a bench and his black face disappeared into a shadow as he said, “Well, if you’re gonna get creative, make sure you can live with whatever you make. No matter how ugly it is.”
I nodded, but I wondered why he was cautioning me. Then I said, “So long.”
“Next time,” he said, “we’ll make a nice photo for your sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart?” I said; “Yeah, right.” My wife had just divorced me and taken the kids.
“Take your Picture?” the blind man would say, peddling his magic to the rush hour mob, like a carnival side-show featuring instant photos for two dollars. The camera hanging from his neck tumbled back and forth across his round chest as he cruised the street like a wobbly mobile home with the shades drawn. He held a placard with sample snapshots pasted on it, and his name, “Hotshot” scrawled across the top. I hadn’t seen him try to operate a camera yet, and I didn’t get the chance until a couple of days later.
“Nice Polaroid” I said when I encountered him again.
“Yep. Been using Polaroids for years,” he said as he fondled it.
“The film’s messy, isn’t it?”
“I might think it was messy,” he said, “if I wanted to stay clean.”
That made me want to roll up my sleeves and try my hand.
“You took those?” I asked, pointing at the samples.
“The samples? Yep. They’re my people; your friends and neighbors on F Street. Picture for you, fella? Takes two seconds. It’ll develop before your eyes.” He listened for the word from me.
“No thanks,” I said. I hated posing for photos. They always came out lousy, and I didn’t want to put him to the test, even though I was curious whether a blind man could really operate a camera.
By the time I turned the corner, I had changed my mind about his offer. That blind man had something I wanted, though I didn’t know what it was. It seemed like sitting for him would be a step in the right direction for me. I thought that, after four years on F Street, I’d have found a friendly face or two in the rush hour crowd. But I still felt like a stranger among them. An invisible man. I was at the point where even the crude spiel of that street vendor sounded like the voice of kindness itself.
I began looking for him. The anticipation itself did me some good. I figured the blind man would paste my picture onto his sample board with the others, so I started thinking about my looks for the first time in months. I got some advice from a hairdresser about covering my bald spot. The new goatee on my chin was her idea, too. I wanted to call the blind man by name; to hear about how he got into the business; how he became blind.
concluded in WordWrights #18
