Just a Little Piece of Heartburn Tom Cheshire. Safety Third Enterprises & Purge ATL, $7 chapbook ISBN13: 1110000064112
Tom Cheshire’s Just a Little Piece of Heartburn, the latest offering from Safety Third Enterprises, is a collection of sometimes funny, though often sad, broken heart and world weary poems that swim in the last gulps of a whiskey bottle, dream sweaty dreams, and stumble, bleeding, either toward an end or an aftermath.
From Ceilings And Floors:
“There was noise in the street
and kids wrapped in plastic
The sound of a garbage truck
rings at 7 am
And the deaf girl next door
screams her mother’s name
I poked in the windows
and saw an empty room
She was built for me
but I know I don’t belong”
These are poems about having it and then losing it, loving it and then pushing it away, squeezing it so hard that it slips up and out of our arms and into the sky. These poems are about seeing, feeling, and tasting it disappear, and being helpless to the senses and the certainty.
From St. Patrick’s Day:
“I’ve hated and loved you
but I know I’ve loved more
You have become my drug
and my drinks
So I know I can become
good at you”
Cheshire’s accomplishment with this collection is his ability to make well-worn themes of love and loss feel fresh, and he does it with simplicity and honesty. And while there isn’t much redemption to be found in these poems, there are faint (very faint) glimmers of hope. Cheshire understands that time heals, and that part of that healing process involves wallowing in the hurt. This collection is both the wallow and the hurt, but it’s not without its careful grins.
From Tuesday Morning, Once Again:
“Saw a boy who looked like a bird
He had a look on his face
like he just made in his pants
Saw an old friend
she looked good
A glass of champagne
and a bunch of old stories”
(2011)
Purchase Just a Little Piece of Heartburn HERE.
Reviewer bio: Mel Bosworth is the author of the novel FREIGHT. Visit his website at melbosworth.com
