Four Poems by Sean Eaton (Queens Review)

Richness came, while the music lasted, postbellum mansions on the harbor's dais of hills

Fire Escape
by Sean Eaton
published by The Queens Review: https://thequeensreview.org/fire-escape-by-sean-eaton/
posted here June 7, 2025

When we moved there in 2001, my mother,
in wonder, remarked she'd never seen
so many slate roofs in one place.
A focus of industry once the canals were dug:
an orchestra of lumber and a cotillion of granite
brought through the port and floated
south to New York, or north to Montreal.
Richness followed, while the music lasted,
and postbellum mansions were built
on the dais of hills above the harbor.
Some even had glassed-in widow's walks,
death-flues in house fires
and eventually outlawed for that fact.

My first apartment was not one of these manses,
but an Edwardian white elephant converted
into eight units. I lived there for four years.
The ceiling leaked. The walls were thin,
and I needed two space heaters to survive
the hard winters. The fire escape
was a tacked-on white staircase cobbled together
from untreated wood. Maintenance never fixed
the heating, and my landlady said she'd sue me
when I told new tenants of this fact.

At New Year's I'd watch the fireworks
from the fire escape window, and in summer
I'd use it to slink back into my apartment
whenever I'd forgotten or lost my house-keys.
In my third year of renting, a stranger left
a naked sapling in a white plastic bucket
on the fire escape landing. The tree was long-dead,
and the pot filled with rock salt.
I did not touch it, and I never used the fire escape
after its appearance. It sat barren for two years,
and remained after I left.


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Give Boston a Kiss for Me
by Sean Eaton
published by The Queens Review: https://thequeensreview.org/give-boston-a-kiss-for-me-by-sean-eaton/

—after Chen Chen’s “We’ll Be Gone After These Brief Messages”

God came to visit on the Leonardo da Vinci
and whispered to me of his Mysteries over red pasta.
Did you know there are an infinite number of universes
stretched out in a grid in eleven dimensions?
In every one of them is a fresh version of me,
all making mistakes that could easily be avoided
if I didn't have a rusted bear-trap for brains. It's true.
In every universe there is also a version of you
making better mistakes and cleaning up after me.
I over-peppered the pasta, and God sneezed like a lion.
We laughed. He bid farewell and left on the Andrea Doria.

A hundred universes over, Chen Chen and I are good friends.
Another dozen over, and we can actually stand each other.

I want to moult light like stained glass on fire.
I settle for thuribles, and make peace with my mother.
I'm proud for no reason. I'm gay, but not queer. Mostly
I'm an ace up the sleeve, a spare to help cheat in the night.
Don't you agree I ought to grow up? This world is wide
enough for us all and our grandchildren also.
Ignore me; I flay myself so others won't have to.
Armed cadres keep score, and apportion mere rice grains.
Dissenters have been smothered by ten million flowers.
I've seen men beaten to death for lying with their wives
in the grass when there's work to be done. It's famine.
Of what use are prized turquoise or magenta blossoms?
Passion don't mean much when the sparrows drop dead.
Let's ration our chocolate bars, they may be our last.

When I mean to, I dissipate like snow in a pot set to boiling.
It's easy to sublimate when there's work to be done.

Every day I relearn the art of ducking for cover.
BOP to the forehead! I'm tired of living a political existence.
But I, also, dream of mermen devouring me atop gold sand,
their taloned fingers dragging, their weight
a good crush, the friction of hips an amber fission,
their iridescent scales blinding as they guide me to Heaven.
I, too, wish to taste the delights which you've tasted.
Dear Chen Chen, my pen friend Chen Chen,
I disliked your book, but know we two are brothers in arms.
Or, at least, cousins who see each other once a year.
I must go to sleep now. Blow Boston a kiss for me.


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Old Wood
by Sean Eaton
published by The Queens Review: https://thequeensreview.org/old-wood-by-sean-eaton/

This was the early 2010s, I was nineteen or so.
Maybe sixteen. Who can say, a decade later?
I was still in high school or just out of high school,
and sorting diligently the books of the Carnegie library
I volunteered at for four years of thin meditations.
The bricks were as sturdy as anything I knew, then.
Finishing with the carts assigned to me that afternoon,
I climbed the magnificent staircase to the second floor,
my palm kissing the Edwardian oak of the balustrade,
the sun outside caressing the tall windows, the width
of the barrel-vault. Beyond the sloping, lopsided balcony,
in one of the side chambers: a gathering in situ,
eleven old men and women enjoying punch and cookies
while another elderly played guitar for them all.
They welcomed me into their midst out of politeness,
and I ignored the refreshments in return of the favor.
His beard was long and unkempt, his hat was a Stetson.
His seasoned fingers drew out the opening notes of
“Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” from the
convivial air—I knew the song from a Dixieland Jazz cover
I'd bought off the iTunes store, on a whim, two weeks
beforehand. I danced a wide circle around all the guests,
humming and jiving to the breeze of his Nylon.
“You're too young to know this song!” one woman
admonished with a peal of laughter. “I like old music!”
I returned, grinning and buoyant. I stayed for the song,
and another beyond it, then begged my farewells,
and ambled back home to my life of something-or-other.
Huddling in my room, away from my stone siblings.
My mother serving chicken breasts boiled and unsalted.
Is this story impressive? If not, please feign so for me.


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See This
by Sean Eaton
published by Eunoia Review: https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2025/06/07/see-this/

Another week, and again an organ has collapsed inside me.
Hear now and see my thorax cave-whistle when I prise my ribs
open, this tropical darkness enewing runt fuchsia viscera.
To my pen pal in Italy, I wrote mostly of my aches and insomnia,
all rinsed in the provincial philosophy that pours from my tap.
I could not match her enthusiasm for Cicero's rhetoric. All is
commensurate; she ended our letter-trading to focus on studies.
My limbs dress in kudzu. The moon doesn't entrance me.
“Your problem is that you have no garden to tend to.”
Your convivial tone. “It's not good to be so idle in life.”
And a walk in my neighborhood is unblemished by blossoming—
all febrile, this construction, all tonsils and no flowerbeds.
The city planners should look into that. Is this Coke chilled?
I have lunch with my mother, and recount funny videos
I've seen recently—no jokes of my own to honor her presence.
I write, but I'm no comedy writer. My piano-playing is dismal.
I draw cloddish pictures that bugger description. And the
platoon of red votive candles lilts in the wind of white vestments.
A small fry of twelve, I would craft my own ocean liners,
stealing real vessels' likenesses then devising new interiors.
I calculated their contours on taped sheets of graph paper.
I memorized anything I had read only once. Now, chronic ennui.
The long days are odd-numbered. The light peers in slanting.
All birds' cries are unnamed to me except for the seagull's.
“The Japanese have made an art of emptiness, you know.
Why don't you try meditating? Learn to make peace with it.”
My own nuclear clock is ticking toward midnight, another live
symptom of biological-political decay. I'm soon to implode,
and ring in the new year with a pair of debriding black strophes.
My pen will incise like a scalpel if I earn it. I'll sing finest sutures.
My greed is intolerable—I, somnolent dhampir, who thinks
he can thrive on the blood of his muses. And I'm hoping that
news broadcasts will brighten up soon. I'm waiting for things
to return to their right shapes. I ask you, my Gulf Stream,
to keep holding tight; the land of my ancestors depends on
your beneficence. And I'm hoping to get well soon, and grasp
inspiration with ten sticky fingers and two broad, red palms.
I'm waiting for something or other to find me in glory.
It's odorless and tasteless, but I'll know when I spot it.