E. Michael Desilets - 3
Heartless Tom the GangsterHe can take
or leave the ladies looks good in a hat the brim taking away his eyes when he’s done thinking about whatever lies before him life death an empty glass. An ordinary man like no other impeccable at funerals and wakes undiminished by loss or the slow sweet savoring of his own swagger he leaves us behind to watch the credits rosary in his pocket purgatory in his chest hell in his hands. When we returned
A Mary Carton 45
“No One To Welcome Me Home” was on the turntable but the record player was unplugged and Peg was eight miles away in the Union ICU. We might have tossed it into that Sunshine Dairy crate with the Deans and the Bings and the Mitch Millers and somebody likely bought it for a quarter at the yard sale. Whatever we did it ended up gone. Right now it seems we kept all the wrong things. |
Sam's Shanty
Samantha was mad
for sea shanties her mind forever wrapped in oilskins and fishnets so Malcolm kept an interminable cache in his pantry bedroom backpack sports utility vehicle fern-lined creel on the off chance Sam came unexpectedly as she often did the ironically landlocked lovers would rock the boat all night long stem to stern Sam in her nautical niceties getting her sea legs at the first melodic mention of a man going down from Yarmouth to Scarborough ‘til the yearning tide cast them ashore on the yawning dawn where they’d linger lazily in salty togetherness nearly as drowned as the poor old dog on the Irish Rover
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