SEAMUS, THEN | J.M. PATRICK Seamus writes letters on the blackboard at the back of the classroom. An E like a backward three, plump and round as his fingers. I watch him from my seat in the second row. I wish he would wash his hair. Someday Seamus will grow to be a handsome man. Those plump hands will thin and his hair will thicken, and he will look a lot like Harrison Ford. Someday Seamus will outgrow all of us to be the tallest kid in the class, and then I will fall in love with him. He confuses M with N and has to erase it twice. He does this with diligence. He does not notice I am staring. He claps the eraser on his jeans, black with ink from a pen that exploded in his pocket. The chalk surrounds his leg like a cloud and then settles there, right below his hipbone. There will be a time, though we don’t know it yet, when Seamus will be the coolest kid in school. This attitude, this smirk, this assertiveness will draw attention from girls in tight skirts with frosted hair and frosted lips and I will watch from the bleachers as he flirts with them from the pitcher’s mound. His O’s are giant mouths surprised, gaping, screaming, maybe, if you look hard enough. I do. Seamus is being punished, though no one is sure for what. It could be a lot of things; the note passed in second period that said “fuck school,” the homework he claims to have done and forgot, the blond kid with glasses he pushed around in gym class. Seamus does a lot of things. He says he doesn’t mind getting caught. In a few years, Seamus will have sex with me on a park bench behind the baseball diamond. He will guide me there in his varsity uniform and he will undress me slowly. I will shiver in the October air, and he will tell me that I am pretty. When he comes, he will look very surprised. His U has a tiny tail. It’s girly. This surprises me. Someone coughs and Seamus turns around. I think he’s going to say something but he doesn’t. When he looks at me, I look into my lap. When I look up again, the tail is gone. I will not become Seamus’s girlfriend. This will not be my choice. I will promise him a lot of things that I don’t intend to give him, like a blow job or children someday. He will smile at me and kiss my forehead and then he will light a joint that glows bright like the headlights of a car in the dark. G’s are difficult for Seamus. I know this because once, in fifth grade, I watched him make a whole line of them on a piece of double-lined paper on the school bus. Little G’s, big G’s, cursive G’s that trailed off into the margin and block G’s that looked angry and menacing. When he was finished, he folded up his paper of G’s and put them in his pocket. They growled the whole way home. Seamus is going to die in the middle of the night two weeks before graduation. I am going to find out at school, over the intercom, the same way I find out about hot lunch changes and early dismissals. Someone will speculate about a drug overdose, and then we will find out it was a motorcycle accident. Someone else will assume he was drunk, but I will never believe that. The H is capitalized. It stands proud. Seamus steps back to see what he has done. His eyes are hazel. His eyes are alive. The teacher stops what she is doing, and Seamus has center stage. He is smiling. He looks right at me, right through me, and we all read what he has written. Enough. J.M. Patrick lives in Connecticut with a small cactus and a squirrel named Todd. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Smokelong Quarterly, The Summerset Review, Night Train, and Noo Journal, among others. Contributors.htmlshapeimage_2_link_0
COMMENTARY | POETRY | FICTION | SUMMER 2008  
THE BOBOLINIS S.L. WISENBERG HARD JOHN M. ANDERSON SEICHE JOSEPH DROGOS PARABLE OF SENSITIVE SKIN MEG FRANKLIN ALONE IN PARIS SUSAN ANDERSON BEGINNINGS EDWARD MC WHINNEY SEAMUS, THEN J.M. PATRICK WILL DEIRDRE BEAT THE ODDS? A.S. KING INSTEAD OF WHAT WE COULD HAVE SAID VINCENT REUSCH FROM THE EDITOR REVIEWS SUSAN MILLAR DUMARS FRANK CONROY ALEKSANDAR HEMON JEAN VALENTINE BETH HELMS ROBERT MACFARLANE ED REGIS DONALD RAY POLLOCK ABOUT US SUBMISSIONS ARCHIVES | SEARCH RECENT AWARD WINNERS:Bobolinis.htmlBobolinis.htmlHard.htmlHard.htmlSeiche.htmlSeiche.htmlParable.htmlParable.htmlParis.htmlParis.htmlBeginnings.htmlBeginnings.htmlDeirdre.htmlDeirdre.htmlSummer-2008.htmlSummer-2008.htmlContradiction-4.htmlReviews.htmlDuMars.htmlConroy.htmlHemon.htmlChalupa.htmlHelms.htmlMacfarlane.htmlRegis.htmlPollock.htmlContrary.htmlSubmissions.htmlArchives.htmlshapeimage_4_link_0shapeimage_4_link_1shapeimage_4_link_2shapeimage_4_link_3shapeimage_4_link_4shapeimage_4_link_5shapeimage_4_link_6shapeimage_4_link_7shapeimage_4_link_8shapeimage_4_link_9shapeimage_4_link_10shapeimage_4_link_11shapeimage_4_link_12shapeimage_4_link_13shapeimage_4_link_14shapeimage_4_link_15shapeimage_4_link_16shapeimage_4_link_17shapeimage_4_link_18shapeimage_4_link_19shapeimage_4_link_20shapeimage_4_link_21shapeimage_4_link_22shapeimage_4_link_23shapeimage_4_link_24shapeimage_4_link_25shapeimage_4_link_26shapeimage_4_link_27shapeimage_4_link_28shapeimage_4_link_29shapeimage_4_link_30