Letter to My Sweet-smelling Woman Waiting

Ah sweet marrow, ganglia, matter of mind
what inviolable pleasure
brings me to my typer
this time of night
in the moonspill, mooncream
what draws me this way and that
from my outer
to my inner
am I all questions
in this mushrooming quiet
and dark of night
this sound of dead foxes
hanging thinly with leaves
the den not returned to
mother hunted while hunting
and dogged down
this deep of night
this dread of sleeping
while my mind can still move
its way over the wave of things
can extrapolate
conjure, figment
articulate
touch, smell
know once again the musk
I could die for right now
this instant
this eternity
for my nares have
the memory of fingers
and the dry pulp
beneath my nails
is your residue of love
I cannot manicure away
such ashes of our fire.

I see suck words on lips
I see the drip of syllables
phonetics of some word rock
buried in you as deeply as mine
sunless and miles deep
past the six hundred miles an hour
that our impulses travel
from mind to extremities of selves
to fingers of satisfaction
to fingers' knowledge
to lips say
to eyes move
to pits of breast set into teeth
like caraway seeds
        (oh I love the working memory
         as my tongue worries a pit
         like a cavity beginning -
         I form words for you at the touch)
What tangible ghost
of nights past is near me
touching like grass
or a spider web not quite there
who the spirit travels its hands
and lips and words against my ears,
my self
my all
as if Chapman's Homer
has its speech
and touches to me
I, I am alone atop Darien
this abominable night
though I have shares
and am shared
oh shared by madness
oh stung by stars
and the tinyness of grass

Oh, listen
believe me, daughter of words
holder of the precious word rock
I am moonmaster
starriser
suncatcher
burster of cometing
yea, a farmer plugging word songs
but a listener
of your night watches
walker of your dreams
the evil-doer, doing, done
that far thin voice of a star
moving on you
oh dream death at morning light

Ah, it is lonely
the fox is dead
I hear the dogs cry
above the clash of leaves
the horn empties its wail on wind
the den not returned to
the young wait cold and hungry
the burrow walls close in in cool pneumatics
the ferret comes slowly
at first teasing
his mouth waters
saliva runs oozing like sperm
his back arches
he tingles

Oh, love
I'd love to come to your mouth
to have your lips holding me
is volcanic thought furnacing
the blade of your tongue
is ever merciless
why are you so unkind to me
why cut memory's cut
do my veins intrigue you
my capillaries crawl
like others crawl
except when you loose your tongue

You are mad! mad!
but I bid you
I bid you
come at me once
all mouth, all imagination
all energy
I would know no other night
nor own one
I am doomed
pusher of thought
darer of deeds
worder of words
I am doomed

who such lip
when such thigh
take the angle
of my eye

lest I lose
that nearing breast
bring your mouth
where you've caressed

use your tongue
as gallant blade
my private parts
to invade

I, moonmaster
master of words
roper of stars
brander of herds

of Pegasus flock
beg your tongue talk
let it be known
beneath your bone

I love your curves
and wanting nerves

Sleep comes now
sifting through me
pushing its delights
into the barest ends of me
the torture of a sugar
remembered
thighs intersect
triangle of nerves
the coming away slowly
as a rusty sled downhill
excruciatingly lovely
from the pitch of parting

Once I shot at a doe
and oh! I missed! I missed!



####

Eleven years retired, Tom Sheehan operates with his partner, Larry Bucaria, Newwriters.com, helping writers find publishing space.

He is co-editor of the sold-out "A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900-2000," a nostalgic and historical 452-page look at his hometown, Saugus, MA, just north of Boston. Their committee borrowed $60,000 to print the book and paid it off five weeks after receipt of books.

He has work in Paumanok Review, 3amMagazine, Small Spiral Notebook, Dakota House, Stirring, Samsara, Comrades, Split Shot, Melange, Red River, Nefarious, Carnelian, New Works Review, Eclectica, Slow Trains, Clackamas Review, etc.

Tom has received a Silver Rose Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story from American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) for "The Man Who Hid Music" in New Works Review, and nominations for Pushcart Prize XXVII from The Paumanok Review (for "The Dumpmaster's Boy) and for inclusion in The Zine Yearbook by Become the Media (for "The Boy Who Got Stuck under the Warren Avenue Bridge" in Snowbound).

His novel,"Vigilantes East"," has just been released from Publish America (on Amazon and Barnes& Noble). A second novel,"An Accountable Death," is currently serialized on 3amMagazine.com, a Paris web site, which has also used four of his short stories, a Korean War poem with pictures and a five-page interview about "A Gathering of Memories."

He has just won first prize at London's Eastoftheweb for his non-fiction piece, "The Three Fisherman," and the article will be included on their literary site.

You can reach Tom at: tomsheehan@attbi.com

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