Atwater
If I am on the river, if I am staring in the water, if I see all the plastic cups,
a whiffle ball, sharp objects swiftly moving, miscellaneous wrappers, no buttons,
then, where do I enter?
II
You can walk
under bridges, through one city
and then another without noticing. Look, a drowning shopping cart. In it a list:
toothpaste,
candles,
juice,
pink dishwashing soap.
III
The water isn’t potable. It doesn’t irrigate. It will not serve us.
The river is passing.
IV
This river is no river of future.
V
There is a boy with black hair. His father passes the kite string.
The boy looks up. The kite is yellow and probably black. Certainly dark in spots. A bee maybe? The string slips. The boy doesn’t want.
The kite is going one way, the river another.
VI
Rain runoff rushes down Arroyo Calabasas, Bell Creek, San Gabriel mountain canyons,
Compton creek. It mixes with our gray water. If we are unlucky the sewers run into it.
Terminates not at Playa del Rey, King of Pacific beaches, but a container port where sound diminishes water.
VII
We are wry about it.
We do not sit and reminisce about the night we rode this river,
self-sufficient, the moon glimmering in waves.
We do not yearn for the slap of river on shore.
It is us this river. We sluff off. We ride over back and forth and over and over and do
not call its name. We do not turn in the dark to spell it on the broad back of a lover.
We have an ocean. But that is another story.
VIII
The Mississippi is commerce. The Mahoning is canoeing clubs. Seine sublime.
Ganges, religious. In the Amazon swim fish that can bite OFF your feet. Now look at how movies have made rivers so frightening they appear in my dreams.
IX
Why are you surprised; it is a river therefore people drown.
They watch too much TV and consequently have no experience.
The swift deep is something they learn too late.
We don’t stand, stare,
throw coins,
think of it as travel,
salvation,
escape.
X
People have jumped. From the spanning bridges. Off the viaducts.
They heard the laugh concrete has.
I don’t actually remember the story of the woman who leapt from the bridge with her baby.
I heard it. I saw the daughter in Thursday’s paper. The details are hazy.
I remember the part where it said she was lonely. That struck me.
Who isn’t really?
XI
I live on the river bank. Not the current but the natural shore.
Some hot nights the river smells. Damp clothes left in a plastic bag. Some sort
of excremental mold. Something the cat dragged in.
I do not stand and stare. I do not whisper its name to the broad back of my lover.
If this is a river…
XII
The daughter, all grown sitting at her kitchen table, said, in the Life & Times section, that she forgave her mother. “My mother was just lonely.” We can all understand that.
This forgiving daughter with unkempt hair fascinates me. See her in the shabby
four-color of newspapers. The printer’s rosette off-register;
she is cyan, yellow, black, redder than dreams.
XIII
We are wry about her mother at dinner. Wire monkey mother. Mother that dresses you up
to jump off a bridge.
XIV
If this is a river it has no dreams.
XV
No, it has one dream.
XVI
Where do I enter?
XVII
When you live this near you have frogs and June bugs. If you lived one street further
you would have the June bugs but not the frogs. You would not hear the cars on the Golden State freeway, either.
Some years the June bugs stay until July. The frogs less regular.
You have more in your yard if you have a dog and not a cat.
If you go down to the river at night you can hear frogs in the stream of vehicles.
You would not want to go down to the river at night. Remember, this isn’t a river
of dreams, you do not toss coins for wishes, there is no salvation at this shore, no one whispers its name into your ear.
XVIII
Here is the historia of el Rio.
Listen. This is before the Spanish altered the world.
“Some of the old men were smoking pipes well made of baked clay and they puffed at us three mouthfuls of smoke. We gave them a little tobacco and glass beads, and they went away well pleased. . . After crossing the river we entered a large vineyard of wild grapes and an infinity of rosebushes in full bloom. . .After traveling about half a league we came to the village of this region, the people of which on seeing us, came out into the road. As they drew near they began to howl like wolves; they greeted us and wished to give us seeds, but we did not accept them. Seeing this, they threw some handfuls of them on the ground and the rest in the air. (Bolton 1927:147).”
XIX
The neighborhood ice cream truck plays “Fascination.”
In the winds, in the blasting heat, right through the fall, it is the background. Fascination.
I stop. Look around my garden. Notice what I can.
It never fails, I sing a line, I do not know the real words to this song.
The freight trains follow the river like a fascination.
The Golden State freeway follows the river like a snake. No, that’s not it. The freeway
hems the river. That's not it . . . .
The wild grasses break through the concrete channel and grow
promiscuous. They regreen her in clumps.
The foreign reeds grow straight down her spine.
XX
The river goes one way, people another.
My neighbor Moselle never liked the smell of this river.
When Moselle first laid eyes on it---it was when people took pride---
it was when you could trust what was in the water and who came to your front door.
She couldn’t speak for anyone else.
It smelled like an infinity of roses.
XXI
Floribunda I am promised at the Home Depot nursery.
“Blaze
Masses of bright-red 3” blooms cover this
popular climber spring through fall.
Strong canes reaching… display a profusion of eye-
catching, brilliant color…
Water thoroughly, weekly.”
Plant it at the corner of the house and it will climb like the climbing
roses of Spain.
My mother says, you’ll be sorry. My mother sees it attack the roof tiles. My father
the plumbing. I am going to see an infinity of roses.
XXII
This river is paying for its past anarchy. It is restricted, under observation; police copters, news choppers, Stealth bomber on the way to Dodger Stadium.
They scan for floating bodies.
How can anyone decipher the homeless river life under the Los Feliz bridge?
We who live here do so at our own peril. We who live on the shore ignore much. We can hear the river.
We live with gun shots, mortgages, gangs, landlords, out of old Winnebagos parked riverside.
They never tell you a thing about this channel when you live here.
It's a channel, isn’t it? It isn’t a river, is it?
XXIII
“We forded the Rio … which descends with great rapidity from the canyon through which it leaves the mountains and enters the plains. All the country that we saw on this day’s march appeared to us most suitable for the production of all kinds of grain and fruit.”(Teggart 1911:181).
Batata,
maize,
tomatl,
ahuacatl (ah’-wah-cah-tl),
chicle,
cacauatl (kah-kah’-wah-tl)
papas.
“When early British golfers were playing with a ball made of feathers packed into a leather cover, Indians were playing a game with a ball made of rubber.” (Teggart 1911:181)… they began to howl like wolves; they greeted us and wished to give us seeds, but we did not accept them (Bolton 1927:147)….”
XXIV
Coming home. Stuck in traffic. All of us resigned but cunning.
On the viaduct, over the river, we do not move, it moves.
Here transportation is a toy; speed’s a memory. All our achievements fallow
misrepresentations. We’ve missed the mark somehow.
We’ve missed appointments, births, love. Fathers walk away. Dinners cool; down
on our luck, death in the air, we are struck with the smell of rotting dog.
What if the river is liquid god?
I can’t get that mother out of my mind.
I bring her up at lunch. Boss asks, Who do you think you are?
Singular, lonely, had enough fiction for one life.
I laugh, the arugula leaves, alligators at the tip of my fork, flap.
XXV
I am the jumping woman. I think of diving all the time. Let me out of this car…
The water is fine… An infinity of roses,… seeds flung in the air.
We know this. We ALL know the KNOCK in our ear.
If god is a liquid, if this is a river…
XXVI
There is nothing you can be told that you don’t already know.
Don’t ask a river.
Don’t run your firm hand along its slippery thigh.
Don’t spill your drunk guts out, pat your belly and think
you gave yourself to it, fed your real self to this deep slim channel.
Hollow, hollow your friends yawn on the shore. There is nothing
I can tell you that you don’t already know.
XXVII
chan.nel (chan’el) n. Abbr. chan.1. The bed of a stream or river.2. The deeper part of a river or harbor, especially a deep navigable passage.3. A trench, furrow, or groove.4.. Electronics. A specified frequency band for the transmission and reception of electromagnetic signals, as for television signals. 5. The medium through which a spirit guide purportedly communicates with the physical world.
XXVIII
Sit and look at it, go ahead, come on, hurry up, scoot, pick it up,
go on go.
Sit on slanted concrete. Watch water. Look, eddies. See the pied-billed grebe
dive rather than fly. Ignore the traffic. Over there, the great cosmopolitan egret-----
nuptial plumage----stands, reflects in the current. Sit,
sit by the river and want.
XXIX
Clean the air and your own heart.
Drink all the bottled water you can.
Drink it all day long if need be.
Look, we are water. Our veins: what are they but a personal river?
Do you stare at water and think of your affinities? Have you ever?
When you see it (hostage) follow a cement course, what do you see?
XXX
You can walk under bridges, through one city without noticing
you are in another.
Where is our empathy?
Life shouldn’t be so hard. All we want is to be liked, admired if possible, just
not hated.
But, we do not leave well enough alone. We do not let things set. We do not give things
peace.
XXXI
The mother who leapt, got up and got dressed then dressed the baby.
The mother broke. The baby daughter bounced.
Was it notoriety she wanted them to land in?
Was it more of the same? The ordinary list?
Toothpaste,
dishwashing soap,
pink juice.
At the sink scrubbing pans the cinematic me
jumps off buildings, drives cars into walls, off the edge of cliffs.
I am lonely, the dishwater is tepid.
I don’t have the energy to cleanser the sink so
I jump, crash, drown Very dramatic.
So’s the funeral.
Fewer people come than in the past. I’ve grown more realistic.
But they still regret my cold body laid out.
They should have called me more.
They might have had me over for a little something once in awhile.
Have I told you about this pain I have? I’ve been talking about it for years but no one listens.
I’ve gone from one thing to the next and it never leaves me. The number of things I’ve tried, the amount of money I’ve thrown at it. The time it has eaten away.
Legion, all of it.
And what good does it do to tell you about it!
XXXII
Had enough fiction for one life?
XXXIII
Let me gather my heart and lock it. A raven settles
in the apricot tree. All green, all hard, all raven waver.
There are so many ways to be famous but to be happy you must trust the small.
XXXIV
What do you know of loneliness?
Don’t turn away.
Without quizzes
without note pads
with all of the years brushed away;
think.
Don’t turn to me,
XXXV
Here is where I enter, proctor
in these cold times brought by various product lines.
Elicits desired response.
I fail myself in check-out lines.
Always out of something.
XXXVI
Here is where I am a part of the whole,
a part of the problem, and I can’t make myself stop
the purchase. Home late from work
I can’t deal with recycling plastic and one slips to the trash.
If this river is liquid god, What have I done?
This morning I stood on the porch staring.
Should I paint it again or tile it once and for all?
Is it a bad entrance?
Anything happens when truth is not the point.
XXXVII
There is no prayer wheel turning over the rush of water; this isn’t Tibet.
The ancestors are not burned at the shore, this isn’t India.
No gold in pan, there’s no Rush. No fish spawn.
No bend in this river that isn’t planned.
No gift of seeds.
No roses, no, not anymore.
Because we can.
Because we can
Human’s nasty eye and moneyed hand.
We are in a lot of trouble but carpe diem, don’t worry we do not live that long.
XXXVIII
Deal the cards, as we say in my family when somebody talks too long.
Here I stand at the gritty brink of this river with my particular set of genes in hand.
Deal the cards.
If I am on the river, if I am staring in the water, if I see all the plastic cups,
a whiffle ball, sharp objects swiftly moving, miscellaneous wrappers, no buttons,
then, where do I enter?
II
You can walk
under bridges, through one city
and then another without noticing. Look, a drowning shopping cart. In it a list:
toothpaste,
candles,
juice,
pink dishwashing soap.
III
The water isn’t potable. It doesn’t irrigate. It will not serve us.
The river is passing.
IV
This river is no river of future.
V
There is a boy with black hair. His father passes the kite string.
The boy looks up. The kite is yellow and probably black. Certainly dark in spots. A bee maybe? The string slips. The boy doesn’t want.
The kite is going one way, the river another.
VI
Rain runoff rushes down Arroyo Calabasas, Bell Creek, San Gabriel mountain canyons,
Compton creek. It mixes with our gray water. If we are unlucky the sewers run into it.
Terminates not at Playa del Rey, King of Pacific beaches, but a container port where sound diminishes water.
VII
We are wry about it.
We do not sit and reminisce about the night we rode this river,
self-sufficient, the moon glimmering in waves.
We do not yearn for the slap of river on shore.
It is us this river. We sluff off. We ride over back and forth and over and over and do
not call its name. We do not turn in the dark to spell it on the broad back of a lover.
We have an ocean. But that is another story.
VIII
The Mississippi is commerce. The Mahoning is canoeing clubs. Seine sublime.
Ganges, religious. In the Amazon swim fish that can bite OFF your feet. Now look at how movies have made rivers so frightening they appear in my dreams.
IX
Why are you surprised; it is a river therefore people drown.
They watch too much TV and consequently have no experience.
The swift deep is something they learn too late.
We don’t stand, stare,
throw coins,
think of it as travel,
salvation,
escape.
X
People have jumped. From the spanning bridges. Off the viaducts.
They heard the laugh concrete has.
I don’t actually remember the story of the woman who leapt from the bridge with her baby.
I heard it. I saw the daughter in Thursday’s paper. The details are hazy.
I remember the part where it said she was lonely. That struck me.
Who isn’t really?
XI
I live on the river bank. Not the current but the natural shore.
Some hot nights the river smells. Damp clothes left in a plastic bag. Some sort
of excremental mold. Something the cat dragged in.
I do not stand and stare. I do not whisper its name to the broad back of my lover.
If this is a river…
XII
The daughter, all grown sitting at her kitchen table, said, in the Life & Times section, that she forgave her mother. “My mother was just lonely.” We can all understand that.
This forgiving daughter with unkempt hair fascinates me. See her in the shabby
four-color of newspapers. The printer’s rosette off-register;
she is cyan, yellow, black, redder than dreams.
XIII
We are wry about her mother at dinner. Wire monkey mother. Mother that dresses you up
to jump off a bridge.
XIV
If this is a river it has no dreams.
XV
No, it has one dream.
XVI
Where do I enter?
XVII
When you live this near you have frogs and June bugs. If you lived one street further
you would have the June bugs but not the frogs. You would not hear the cars on the Golden State freeway, either.
Some years the June bugs stay until July. The frogs less regular.
You have more in your yard if you have a dog and not a cat.
If you go down to the river at night you can hear frogs in the stream of vehicles.
You would not want to go down to the river at night. Remember, this isn’t a river
of dreams, you do not toss coins for wishes, there is no salvation at this shore, no one whispers its name into your ear.
XVIII
Here is the historia of el Rio.
Listen. This is before the Spanish altered the world.
“Some of the old men were smoking pipes well made of baked clay and they puffed at us three mouthfuls of smoke. We gave them a little tobacco and glass beads, and they went away well pleased. . . After crossing the river we entered a large vineyard of wild grapes and an infinity of rosebushes in full bloom. . .After traveling about half a league we came to the village of this region, the people of which on seeing us, came out into the road. As they drew near they began to howl like wolves; they greeted us and wished to give us seeds, but we did not accept them. Seeing this, they threw some handfuls of them on the ground and the rest in the air. (Bolton 1927:147).”
XIX
The neighborhood ice cream truck plays “Fascination.”
In the winds, in the blasting heat, right through the fall, it is the background. Fascination.
I stop. Look around my garden. Notice what I can.
It never fails, I sing a line, I do not know the real words to this song.
The freight trains follow the river like a fascination.
The Golden State freeway follows the river like a snake. No, that’s not it. The freeway
hems the river. That's not it . . . .
The wild grasses break through the concrete channel and grow
promiscuous. They regreen her in clumps.
The foreign reeds grow straight down her spine.
XX
The river goes one way, people another.
My neighbor Moselle never liked the smell of this river.
When Moselle first laid eyes on it---it was when people took pride---
it was when you could trust what was in the water and who came to your front door.
She couldn’t speak for anyone else.
It smelled like an infinity of roses.
XXI
Floribunda I am promised at the Home Depot nursery.
“Blaze
Masses of bright-red 3” blooms cover this
popular climber spring through fall.
Strong canes reaching… display a profusion of eye-
catching, brilliant color…
Water thoroughly, weekly.”
Plant it at the corner of the house and it will climb like the climbing
roses of Spain.
My mother says, you’ll be sorry. My mother sees it attack the roof tiles. My father
the plumbing. I am going to see an infinity of roses.
XXII
This river is paying for its past anarchy. It is restricted, under observation; police copters, news choppers, Stealth bomber on the way to Dodger Stadium.
They scan for floating bodies.
How can anyone decipher the homeless river life under the Los Feliz bridge?
We who live here do so at our own peril. We who live on the shore ignore much. We can hear the river.
We live with gun shots, mortgages, gangs, landlords, out of old Winnebagos parked riverside.
They never tell you a thing about this channel when you live here.
It's a channel, isn’t it? It isn’t a river, is it?
XXIII
“We forded the Rio … which descends with great rapidity from the canyon through which it leaves the mountains and enters the plains. All the country that we saw on this day’s march appeared to us most suitable for the production of all kinds of grain and fruit.”(Teggart 1911:181).
Batata,
maize,
tomatl,
ahuacatl (ah’-wah-cah-tl),
chicle,
cacauatl (kah-kah’-wah-tl)
papas.
“When early British golfers were playing with a ball made of feathers packed into a leather cover, Indians were playing a game with a ball made of rubber.” (Teggart 1911:181)… they began to howl like wolves; they greeted us and wished to give us seeds, but we did not accept them (Bolton 1927:147)….”
XXIV
Coming home. Stuck in traffic. All of us resigned but cunning.
On the viaduct, over the river, we do not move, it moves.
Here transportation is a toy; speed’s a memory. All our achievements fallow
misrepresentations. We’ve missed the mark somehow.
We’ve missed appointments, births, love. Fathers walk away. Dinners cool; down
on our luck, death in the air, we are struck with the smell of rotting dog.
What if the river is liquid god?
I can’t get that mother out of my mind.
I bring her up at lunch. Boss asks, Who do you think you are?
Singular, lonely, had enough fiction for one life.
I laugh, the arugula leaves, alligators at the tip of my fork, flap.
XXV
I am the jumping woman. I think of diving all the time. Let me out of this car…
The water is fine… An infinity of roses,… seeds flung in the air.
We know this. We ALL know the KNOCK in our ear.
If god is a liquid, if this is a river…
XXVI
There is nothing you can be told that you don’t already know.
Don’t ask a river.
Don’t run your firm hand along its slippery thigh.
Don’t spill your drunk guts out, pat your belly and think
you gave yourself to it, fed your real self to this deep slim channel.
Hollow, hollow your friends yawn on the shore. There is nothing
I can tell you that you don’t already know.
XXVII
chan.nel (chan’el) n. Abbr. chan.1. The bed of a stream or river.2. The deeper part of a river or harbor, especially a deep navigable passage.3. A trench, furrow, or groove.4.. Electronics. A specified frequency band for the transmission and reception of electromagnetic signals, as for television signals. 5. The medium through which a spirit guide purportedly communicates with the physical world.
XXVIII
Sit and look at it, go ahead, come on, hurry up, scoot, pick it up,
go on go.
Sit on slanted concrete. Watch water. Look, eddies. See the pied-billed grebe
dive rather than fly. Ignore the traffic. Over there, the great cosmopolitan egret-----
nuptial plumage----stands, reflects in the current. Sit,
sit by the river and want.
XXIX
Clean the air and your own heart.
Drink all the bottled water you can.
Drink it all day long if need be.
Look, we are water. Our veins: what are they but a personal river?
Do you stare at water and think of your affinities? Have you ever?
When you see it (hostage) follow a cement course, what do you see?
XXX
You can walk under bridges, through one city without noticing
you are in another.
Where is our empathy?
Life shouldn’t be so hard. All we want is to be liked, admired if possible, just
not hated.
But, we do not leave well enough alone. We do not let things set. We do not give things
peace.
XXXI
The mother who leapt, got up and got dressed then dressed the baby.
The mother broke. The baby daughter bounced.
Was it notoriety she wanted them to land in?
Was it more of the same? The ordinary list?
Toothpaste,
dishwashing soap,
pink juice.
At the sink scrubbing pans the cinematic me
jumps off buildings, drives cars into walls, off the edge of cliffs.
I am lonely, the dishwater is tepid.
I don’t have the energy to cleanser the sink so
I jump, crash, drown Very dramatic.
So’s the funeral.
Fewer people come than in the past. I’ve grown more realistic.
But they still regret my cold body laid out.
They should have called me more.
They might have had me over for a little something once in awhile.
Have I told you about this pain I have? I’ve been talking about it for years but no one listens.
I’ve gone from one thing to the next and it never leaves me. The number of things I’ve tried, the amount of money I’ve thrown at it. The time it has eaten away.
Legion, all of it.
And what good does it do to tell you about it!
XXXII
Had enough fiction for one life?
XXXIII
Let me gather my heart and lock it. A raven settles
in the apricot tree. All green, all hard, all raven waver.
There are so many ways to be famous but to be happy you must trust the small.
XXXIV
What do you know of loneliness?
Don’t turn away.
Without quizzes
without note pads
with all of the years brushed away;
think.
Don’t turn to me,
XXXV
Here is where I enter, proctor
in these cold times brought by various product lines.
Elicits desired response.
I fail myself in check-out lines.
Always out of something.
XXXVI
Here is where I am a part of the whole,
a part of the problem, and I can’t make myself stop
the purchase. Home late from work
I can’t deal with recycling plastic and one slips to the trash.
If this river is liquid god, What have I done?
This morning I stood on the porch staring.
Should I paint it again or tile it once and for all?
Is it a bad entrance?
Anything happens when truth is not the point.
XXXVII
There is no prayer wheel turning over the rush of water; this isn’t Tibet.
The ancestors are not burned at the shore, this isn’t India.
No gold in pan, there’s no Rush. No fish spawn.
No bend in this river that isn’t planned.
No gift of seeds.
No roses, no, not anymore.
Because we can.
Because we can
Human’s nasty eye and moneyed hand.
We are in a lot of trouble but carpe diem, don’t worry we do not live that long.
XXXVIII
Deal the cards, as we say in my family when somebody talks too long.
Here I stand at the gritty brink of this river with my particular set of genes in hand.
Deal the cards.
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©2024/2025 Jacqueline De Angelis, writing, audio, video, paintings and site images are the property of Jacqueline De Angelis. Photography: Ricardo Medina, Edean Amador. Watercolors: Jacqueline De Angelis. Design: Simple West.
©2024/2025 Jacqueline De Angelis, writing, audio, video, paintings and site images are the property of Jacqueline De Angelis. Photography: Ricardo Medina, Edean Amador. Watercolors: Jacqueline De Angelis. Design: Simple West.