My Sweet-smelling Woman Waiting

Tom Sheehan

Ah sweet marrow ganglia matter of mind what inviolable pleasure brings me to my typer this time of night in the moonspill mooncreamwhat 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 wander 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 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 simple 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 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!

Tom Sheehan's books are Epic Cures, 2005 and Brief Cases, Short Spans, November 2008 from Press 53 of NC; A Collection of Friends, 2004, From the Quickening, March 2009 from Pocol Press of VA; proposals being considered for a collection of cowboy stories, Where the Cowboys Ride Forever, and Out of the Universe Endlessly Calling with other publishers. His work is currently in or coming in Ocean Magazine, Perigee, Rope and Wire Magazine, Qarrtsiluni, War and Literature, Green Silk Journal, Yale Angler's Journal, Camroc Press, Vermont Literary Review, Ozone Park, Oddville Press, Halfway down the Stairs, Ad Hoc Monadnock, Hawk & Whippoorwill, Buffalo Carp, Eden Waters Press, Lyrical Ballads, Newport Review, Loch Raven Review, Indite Circle, Northville Review, and in books coming from Press 53, Home of the Brave, Stories in Uniform, and Milspeak Anthology. He has 10 Pushcart nominations, Million–Writer Noted Story Nominations for 2007 and 2008, the Georges Simenon Award for fiction, and is included in the Dzanc Best of the Web Anthology for 2009.