SCOTT WATERS - POEMS

Scott Waters lives in Oakland, California with his wife and son.  He graduated with a Master's Degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.  Scott has published previously in A New Ulster, The Pangolin Review, Amethyst, Poetica Review, Ink in Thirds, Praxis, The Santa Clara Review, and other journals.

MOVING DAY

They arrive on Saturday
and haul into the sun
the evidence
of your hidden life:

a 1950s wood-paneled Sentinel TV set
with the tubes exposed in back

a metal desk as heavy as a rhino

a Westinghouse refrigerator
with the door removed

lamps and tables in a style
no one remembers

decorative platters
commemorating county fairs
where you must have twirled
in a red-checkered skirt
knees and ankles
glinting like hubcaps
on a brand new Desoto

lace curtains yellowed
by the smoke you must have smoked
at cocktail parties
martini sloshing in hand
as you wafted from room to room

a blue morpho butterfly
in a vanished rainforest

~

how you came to be
the little old hunched lady
with two dangling front teeth
and 9 feral cats
is one of the mysteries
of our neighborhood

where you are now
is a deeper mystery still.
​

​NAME THEM

​the fallen
iris petal
is roughly the shape
of a cut-out
light bulb

wet after the rain

heavy as purple
in my palm

i don't have
proper words
for the fuzzy yellow
vertical ridge
at its base

nor for the
spray of
fountain grass
stenciled
on either side
of the ridge

as if the flower
had drawn
a neighboring scene
onto itself
as it sprang
from the stem

a botanist
i am not

consider me
Adam
after the first rain
when petals bloomed
and fell
faster than he and Eve

could name them

​ANOTHER MONDAY

Cafe at a bend in the road,
car after car slowing to bank
from sunlight into shade,
carrying scribbled Sunday shopping lists,
mud-splattered bicycles,
lovers, wives, husbands,
dogs and kids around the curve of noon
into the chute of another week.

My company's CEO
died in his sleep last night
at age 60.

He will never face
another Monday.
​

​THE LADY AT THE CORNER TABLE

​My wife and I first saw her
years ago
at our favorite cafe

tumbleweed of grey-black hair

cliff-dwelling eyes
looking out
from a corner table

on a busy Saturday morning
she'd wait for it

noisily plunking her bag of books
and papers
as close as she could get

asking--
at the slightest rustle
of napkins
or scrape of cups--
"Are you done with that table?"

then
happily grounded in the corner
she'd scan the room
like a buzzard
looking for interlopers

while guarding her
scrap of dead meat.

*

The cafe eventually closed

we wandered for months
looking for a worthy replacement
with good coffee
fresh pastries
and that indefinable
Something

then one morning
we saw her at Caffe Trieste

camped in the corner

scarfing a sesame bagel
with cream cheese

her eyes flinging spears
at parents of young children
plates and cups in hand
desperate for a free table

and we knew that this
must be

the place.

​HUNGER

​Like air from a tire
warmth has gone out
of the afternoon

the blinds are drawn

walls grey
moving toward black

and I remember
how it feels
to be young
and friendless

marooned on a twin mattress
in a strange city

cockroaches crawling
from under
the toaster oven

whenever I turn it on.