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July 12, 2026

Eutrapelia

Billy Sheehan

KEY:

  1. A child at the aquarium informs me the octopus has three hearts, jokes it must love better than us.
  2. There are jokes in my mother’s eulogy – jokes I believe she would have enjoyed. They land.
  3. I tell my wife that I am grateful we lost our parents young – glad we got all of that out of the way.
  4. The river meandering. An unhurried plop of a turtle; a dragonfly rests on my shoe.
  5. The riverbed naked with drought.
  6. That father at every youth soccer game; that mother at every pageant.
  7. Boss chuckles about firing someone for calling out. It was his cat, and we don’t even do bereavement here.
  8. “Substance Abuse Counselor Drunkenly Crashes Into Crowded N.Y.C. Park, Killing 4”
  9. Full moon contorts itself to scream through the unblocked sliver of your bedroom window.
  10. Socrates raises the hemlock to his lips – keeps his eyes open and his hands steady.
  11. An ant mill forms. At its epicenter is the spine of a discarded sparkler. The colony dies.

Billy Sheehan is an emerging poet based in New Hampshire. His work is written from the perspective of multi-front survivorship and is heavily informed by his roles as a healthcare worker, spiritual care advisor, and volunteer bereavement counselor. His poems have been published most recently in The People’s Book, The Portland Dirt and Headstone, and he performs regularly throughout New England. Billy holds a BA from Connecticut College in English and Philosophy. He is sincerely grateful for any reader willing to join him in exploring the complexities of grief, forgiveness, and place.