Tom Sheehan served in Korea, 1951-52 and has published 13 books. Brief Cases, Short Spans, short stories, was published November 2008 by Press 53, and From the Quickening, another collection, was published this month by Pocol Press. His Epic Cures, a short story collection, earned a 2006 IPPY Award. A Collection of Friends, was nominated for Albrend Memoir Award. He has nominations for ten Pushcart Prizes, three Million Writers nominations, and a Noted Story of 2007 nomination, and received the Georges Simenon Award for Fiction He has hundreds of Internet appearances, with 50 stories currently posted on Rope and Wire Magazine, publishers of western cowboy stories, and six consecutive print issues of Ocean Magazine. He meets again soon for a lunch/gab session with pals, the ROMEOs (Retired Old Men Eating Out, 93/80/79/78). They’ve co-edited two books on their hometown of Saugus, MA, sold 3500 to date of 4500 printed and he can hardly wait to see them. They’ll each have one martini, he’ll have three beers, and the waitress will shine on them.
Apple Pine Mountain
At four, near dawn, resident with trees, a mountain’s
wind song, a moon that clashed with clouds perky
as lambs, friends loving behind me though six feet
apart at times, I pissed off the wide porch down into
the unknown, that good talking beer talking good
again, crisply, this way and that, on the quick glass
of leaves. The sound stole, even for a moment, all
the moon and the cool threat of snow.
But at the last shattering of a leaf, at the end of beer
talk, I was the aggregate of selves knowing Apple
Pine Mountain, was constant and one, a kind of
uniform loneliness with stars punching down their
pneumatic cries, the million years of their dying
that one would hear their voices.
Oh, I heard, between trees and close shadow burst,
between the thrills of impulse, between molecules,
the significance of sound. Oh, I listened, my friends,
I listened and grew dizzy because I heard, from stars
by way of clouds, from loam by way of blade and leaf,
from every joint and joist of the cabin, after pissing
off the porch, love.
Bare-Ribbed Talisman
There’s a piece
of her hanging
like an old jacket
on an old nail
beside a job
I never finished.
Dillinger, On His Way Into The Movies
The air’s
popcorned,
butter-rich,
slicing.
The girl
trembles
electric:
it must
be my
touch, the
allure
of it.
She has
odors
ripe as
berries,
markets
open
early.
Her dress
is Lupinus
Perennis,
Maritime
roadside
purple
like a rich
woman’s
lingerie,
tight in
the crotch,
heady.
After-
wards will
be the
real thing.
