Poetry Magazine, Featured Poet: Chocolate Waters, July-August 2001

Poetry Magazine

Chocolate Waters

USA

Chocolate Waters has been writing and publishing poetry for over three decades. The author of three collections, she is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in Poetry and a fellowship from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.
Her work, which has been nominated for several Pushcart prizes, is widely published and currently appears in Bay Windows, Hell’s Kitchen: Slices of Life, Fireweed, And What Rough Beast and The Second Word Thursdays Anthology. Other work can be browsed on the Internet at the Samsara Quarterly, 2River Review, Conspire, Stirring, the Astrophysicist’s Tango Partner Speaks and at www.chocolatewaters.com.
Hailed as the "Poet Laureate of Hell’s Kitchen,” Waters is a pioneer in women's publishing and in the art of performance poetry. She has toured throughout the United States, but makes her home in Manhattan where she teaches poetry workshops, tutors individual clients and is a frequent participant in the New York City poetry circuit.
Waters' latest release, a limited-edition CD entitled "Chocolate Waters Uncensored," spans 25 years of the poet's groundbreaking performance work from the NYC nightclub S.N.A.F.U. and other Manhattan venues. Just released, it is now available from Eggplant Productions, 415 W. 44 St. Suite 7, New York,
New York 10036 or electronically from eggplant@chocolatewaters.com . It is currently reviewed by PoetryMagazine.com's Features Editor, Andrena Zawinski in this month's edition.

MOOSE LODGE
(reading tonight - featured poet: C. W. - bring all your friends)

Four people here,
six counting me and the emcee,
someone in the "crowd" named Nixon.
So where the hell's the moose?
I ask, hoping to increase the size of the audience.
Buck a beer.
Hadda buy my own.
First things first, they say in AA.
First give me that damn beer.

I light a cigarette,
bartender stomps in,
shooshes at the air with his hands,
jerks on the overhead fan.
"You're not letting people smoke in here?!"

Five dollars.
My take of the door.
The door, the door, get me to the door!
Let me hide out with that moose.

P.S. The emcee loved me.
He even bought a book

Credit: Moose Lodge - Makar

RENEWAL
(For TLC)

Touches of grey flashing through electric black your
hair so lush your body resilient beneath
my hands not touching for so long you
undulating triangle of electric black pressed against
circular frenetic our bodies are so well suited
for this you tell me I'd forgotten your fingers distant
beats of drums your mouth I want to trace my
fingers there endless brown eyes lighting up
your face inside the color of wine you say
mine are sexy your lips are crescent moons
across my face all day my mouth is
stretching to the corners of
my ears you are incandescent shining
through the dark the silence thank you
I remember now

Credit: Renewal - Black Maria

NOT EVEN DEATH MOVES ME

Stretched out on a single bed
in your living room,
one arm hanging down,
dried vomit by your side.
Three days before anyone noticed.
Two years since then
and not a peep out of me.

I went to the funeral service,
a full-blown catholic mass,
which surprised me.
I never knew you believed in anything
larger than yourself.

A memory of you
drunkenly falling off your chair
the last time we had dinner together.
Your old friends that I only saw
when you were alive -
Your sister,
the one you tried so hard to please
and never did,
presiding.

Later in the week your closest friend
returned a book I'd given you:
"To Marc - Best,"
was all I could manage.

Credit: Not Even Death Moves Me - 
The Pedestal Magazine - www.thepedestalmagazine.com

TENA PAULINE BECOMES 
A CHRISTIAN AND
MARRIES AN EVANGELIST
(a pagan dyke's fears about her sister's conversion)

I
My Piscean sister who's younger than I am -
a carpenter, a seamstress, a businesswoman -
once complimented as a dyke
when she rescued my car from a snowdrift
while I stood idly by
dumbfounded.
My curly-haired-blond Lancastrian sister -
   owned her own Porsche when she was 17,
ran my father's restaurant at 20
and lived at home with our absurd family
all of her 24 years.
My Mount Joy, Pennsylvania sister
never even joined the Glee Club in highschool
the caption beneath her senior picture
a blank of disinterest.
Suddenly she
meets a man
named Emanuel
an evangelist
Praise the Lord
My Born-Again-Christianized sister,
her letters effusive with joy:
"I am so happy to wake up each new day . . .
Hallelujah . . . I will continue to try
to open your eyes to this new way of life."


II
The wedding invitation
The praying gold hands
The pronouncement:
"In the spirit of Christian joy…
Tena Pauline Waters and Emanuel Stauffer Hoffer, Jr.
will vow their lives to one another forever..."
Yea though they walk through the valley
of the shadow of Safeway,
They will fear not homosexuals
for Anita Bryant is with them
And they shall dwell in a house near Elizabethtown
for the rest of their Born Again days
Raising good little onward Christian soldiers
To go onward
    With Anita
        Good soldiers
           Good Christians
               Hallelujah
                           Goodbye
                              My love
                                 My sister
                                   My friend
                                      Praise the Lord?

(First published in Charting New Waters, Eggplant press, Denver, CO. USA.
Also included in the CD, “Chocolate Waters Uncensored.” Now available from
www.chocolatewaters.com)

FEMININE

The word has become hateful.
It reminds you of little-girl voices,
clutch purses, ankle bracelets,
clean underwear in case you get hit
by a truck.

Feminine.
The word has lost its woman,
its essence, its puissance,
its delicious smell.
It reminds you of deodorant sprays
of "female troubles,"
of not-enough-iron-in-the diet.

Feminine.
The word has become declasse.
They scorn it in classrooms,
in locker rooms, in faggots.
They scorn it in political matters
and in women's bars.

Feminine.
The word has lost its noblesse,
its butch, butch, butchiness.
Feminine.
The word has lost
its balls.

Credit: Feminine - The Leading Edge