DM
153
DM 107
Saugus, a, um
A Celebration of Tom Sheehan
{2016 DM Artist-in-Residence}
And Great American Storytelling
~ Porte D'entrée ~
The Boy Who Got Stuck under the Warren Avenue Bridge
I Now Burn Pellets in My Stove
Memories of an Old Sports Palace
The Old Man from Blackberry Hill Farm
(below)
Salvatore Giambaressi ~ Numbers Runner, Reader
♠♥ ♣ ♦
The Old Man from Blackberry Hill Farm
He lived on the edge of the mountain, my grandfather the smoker,
and sometimes he’d stay until Saturday burned down and ashed,
the rapping of his pipe against the arm of a chair echoing for days
after he’d go a sail down the long curve of the field. At our house
his pipe was alive, it made rooms move, shifting sideways, leaning
like spears, the smoke like sheets seen through. Ceilings came down
on him and lifted away on anyone’s breath, someone calling on him,
an old ice cutter, boots knee-high, scars deep as bones allowed, often
a thread still burned in the flesh of memory, as if that cut had a face.
They’d talk about all-day on the ice, saws serious as pistons, singing,
carving blocks out of the pond we swam in long before August let go,
his pipe and horses’ breaths tiering their gray-white differences, hawks
peaking on slow-motion thermals. They’d talk of bitter cold as if it was
a friend they’d put up with for the good of all concerned, or a fool wind
coming off the pond’s hind quarters the way a girl held on once, and fires
they’d light right out on the ice, like a good friend ought to be talked of.
Crushed ice, shavings thick as orange puree, pieces promising quick liquid,
sloshed underfoot. Horses, looming out of an Arabian skyline, great as all
outdoors, slid the pond under iron shoes enough to sink any man in all that
variety of water, their chains and shackles sure signs of going down good
and for the count, bubbles being the last sign you’d ever see, lots of them,
lots of old men, lots of old horses, eternal as huge blocks of ice, as much
long spirit as any of that clan my grandfather the smoker was part of.
Tom Sheehan
BIOGRAPHY
Tom Sheehan served in the 31st Infantry, Korea 1951-52, graduated Boston College in 1956 and worked 32 years at Raytheon Company, retiring in 1991. He's an avowed enthusiast of Boston-area sports teams at all levels.
His books include Epic Cures; Brief Cases, Short Spans; Collection of Friends; From the Quickening; The Saugus Book; Ah, Devon Unbowed; Reflections from Vinegar Hill; This Rare Earth & Other Flights. He has published 28 books, which include the western collections The Nations, Where Skies Grow Wide and Cross Trails published by Pocol Press, and Six Guns, Inc., by Nazar Look and three titles issued in 2016, ... The Cowboys, Swan River Daisy and Jehrico ~ Eleven Stories of a Mexican Boy in the Old West. The fourth Harry Krisman mystery novel, Vigilantes East, is available from Hammer & Anvil Books, which earlier released Murder from The Forum (hockey novel set in the old Forum), Death for a Lottery Foe and Death by Punishment.
He has multiple work in following publications: Rosebud, Literally Stories, DM du Jour, Danse Macabre, Linnet’s Wings, Serving House Journal, Eclectica, Copperfield Review, La Joie Magazine, Soundings East, Vermont Literary Review, Literary Orphans, Indiana Voices Journal, Frontier Tales, Western Online Magazine, Provo Canyon Review, Vine Leaves Journal, Nazar Look, Eastlit, Rope & Wire Magazine, In Other Words/Merida, The Literary Yard, Green Silk Journal, Fiction on the Web, The Path, Faith-Hope and Fiction, The Cenacle, etc. He has 32 Pushcart nominations, and five Best of the Net nominations (with one winner) and short story awards from Nazar Look for 2012- 2015, and a Georges Simenon Fiction Award. International magazine/network sites include Canada, Mexico, Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Romania and India.
He was 2016 Writer-in-Residence at Danse Macabre ~ An Online Literary Magazine.