Poems
by Irena Klepfisz
Judith Waterman: A Life
1. Identity
My mother was against you from the moment
she asked if you were Jewish and for years she refused
to forget or forgive your midwestern goyishe birth.
But when we first met you proudly listed
all the cheap Jewish food you'd found like at Yoneh Shimels
in the East Village and further uptown in the kitchen at Atran House
with its delicious flanken and even cheaper brisket.
You had hair down to your waist.
One time a man in a Bronx diner saw you
sitting at the counter drinking coffee before
(or after) some job interview
and he demanded to know: "Hey lady! Are you a hippie?"
We laughed when you told me.
But later you cut your beautiful hair
because you thought it stopped you from getting
those office jobs you so hated.
A friend reported back to you
that a couple of people she'd sent you to
for a possible job asked her: "Why was she
wearing men's shoes?" Furious you raged: "I live
in the country. What do they expect? high heels? "
Always questions about who you were what you were
always the insistence apologies explanations justifications.
One day, many many years later when we were
already really old we decided to check out the West Village
where we'd once spent so much time and found that
the Duchess was gone (how many years already?)
and everything else.
We stood stunned at the changes.
We used to hang out for hours at the Italian cafe on Greenwich.
It had plush chairs and overpriced coffee. Further south on Seventh
had been the Women's Coffee house where we'd sometimes
go to sober up or meet up with friends.
That day while standing mute just trying to adjust
to the unfamiliar landscape a young butch dyke
approached and asked us gently:
"Are you ladies lost? Do you need help?"
She thought we were two elderly dykes from some small
small town watching for the first time the gay scene
in sinful New York . We smiled and thanked her.
She got the important part right.
BTW: Did I mention that you were an artist?
2. In the painting1
You wrote in justifying the size of your canvases:
I worked in an apartment in Times Square. My studio space was exactly 12 feet wide, and my paintings at 11 feet allowed just enough space [for me] to turn them around and upside down... I had a sense of being in the painting since it dominated even my peripheral vision. Part of the time I looked through my reducing lens. I should emphasize that the scale of the work in relationship to the space of the studio represented my resistance to the limitations imposed from without.
You said you dislike[d]...the inevitable 'distance' between the viewer and the finished [smaller] work...[A larger canvas] gives one the feeling of standing in the painting.
In response to a question by a reporter about your process, you said that you wanted to avoid finishing them. Having them there, you said, gave you a sense of security. You once told me that you liked waking in the morning and knowing they were there.
You didn't title most of your canvases. But after your lover's death you abandoned all colors and gave all those canvases names: Black River. Tombs. Inner Wall. Outer Wall. Memorials. Coffin. But the last ones returned to light and you painted the coffin as lush and overflowing with celebratory, brilliantly colored flowers.
During your lifetime you completed more than 70 oil canvases and more than 400 prints, etchings and oil and watercolors on paper.
1 All words in italics are Judy Waterman's found in her papers.
3. The artist at work
You were:
--a probation officer and case worker
--a recreational leader, arts and crafts counselor
--a part-time evening clerk in the Picture Department of NYC's 42nd Street Library
--an extra on CBS soap operas "The Secret Storm" and "Love of Life "
--an artist for the Cultural Council Foundation Artists' Project through CETA, painting public murals and leading art workshops for seniors
--a word processor in a law office
--an adjunct art instructor in Fairleigh Dickinson, North Adams State College and Russell Sage
--an adjunct women's studies and art instructor in the external Adult Degree Program at Vermont College
--a transcriber of taped reports
--a companion to the sister of Edna St. Vincent Millay
--an instructor in evening weekly ESL and GED classes for union members
--an active member of the local AFL-CIO chapter and its negotiating committee
--an organizer of our building, banding the tenants together to get it designated rent stabilized.
There were never any benefits. You were 74 when your deteriorating health forced you to stop working. There was no pension.
Four years later, when you came home from the hospital with its antiseptic deathly white beds and saw your favorite maroon sheets waiting for you,
you said
Finally
and lay down.
Three days later you passed into the painting.
The Old Poet & Orion
It's validating to know he's as stuck
as I am always looking to target
whatever comes along.
But I have noticed that nothing
nothing ever happens. He's been standing
there in the same position for as long
as I can remember. I thought
it romantic devoting one's life
to seizing the perfect moment.
Tonight I'm having real doubts.
Still I try to be encouraging
keeping a positive outlook but
(is this familiar?) he insists: "It's hopeless.
By the time I see the winking goose
it's studded tail of galactic dust
bad news: it's dead and black and even deadly
ready to eat me in the cosmic dark."
Now I'm in despair:
he's doubting his own existence
and mine (none of this is going the way
I'd planned). So I strike back with paradox:
"Shadow " I call to him "imploded being
empty space with a few well placed stars
I know to the bottom of my cloven feet
that today I am still the flesh I was
when I was born and that I stand here
vigilant with you eye to eye tracking all
that passes through: earth water air
light years of light."
The old poet remembers the immigrant girl
From the start
the chorus always said:
We don't want what you have to give.
We don't care who you are.
You have to become different. Change.
When she first walked into class
and pledged with the wrong hand
they all chorused. She stood mute
ashamed as the teacher corrected her
still mute when they chorused
the incomprehensible sounds.
After a time she understood
that girls would talk behind her back
about her ugly stockings the bows in her hair
the braids too tightly braided.
It was all noise and dust and cars
and loneliness: a mother at work
a glass of milk a sandwich waiting
on the kitchen table.
Everyone whispered. She was no one's friend.
They locked her in a closet until
her mother came home
and claimed her. She learned
she would be outside that people
would stop speaking to her and not tell her
that there was always a struggle
to be in which meant that someone
always had to be out.
She was dressed in humiliation
the home-made skirts by the mother who had
no husband. Once in class the teacher asked
them to tell what their father did
and at her turn she stood mute again
because she could not bring herself to say:
"He is dead.
My father is dead.
He has always been dead."
The words were only sounds
for her memory was blank. But they were
sounds she could not risk.
So she stood
mute again until the teacher asked: "Do you
have a father?" And she shook her head
in shame
in fear
and sat down.
She learned nothing they wanted her to know
but everything else
about being alone
about keeping it close to her heart
about silence about how her own words
rebounded in her silence about
how she could use them
but only if she remained on the outside.
