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THE NEW HAND

THE NEW HAND

$20.00Price

ISBN: 978-0-9717265-0-5

Pub Date: Spring 2001

Pages: 56


By Sean Gillihan


Never before has the universe crumbled out of a rotted fence post so convincingly, an old dog been so wise, the lives of tired bar flies mattered so much than in this amazing first book. If by the end of The New Hand you don't feel like a beautiful zen monk then you must be dead.

—Scott Poole


Sean Gillihan is a vivid and accurate, true new voice in the American West. He's been down the roads, worked the crops, fed the cattle—he knows the drills, and dignifies each quiet thing he talks about.

—William Kittredge


In The New Hand, Gillihan writes with ease about what comes easily, his ties to the land.

—Lee Juillerat, The Klamath Falls Herald and News2

    On Dancing

    The drunk men at the Val Air Ballroom

    want you to dance. Fat, sad men.

    Farmers, their thick fingers root

    around beers or whiskey ditches.


    You can’t say no to sad men. They won’t hear it

    and hear it all their lives,

    the sound of a distant motor, a jet trailing west.

    Yes, it’s a good band. Yes.

    The floor a carnival ride.


    Boys from North English

    thumb gravel for their first kiss.

    Others run the long mile,

    clouds a pink corsage.

    Their girls won’t wait but do,

    lips pursed and their hands of wood or stone.


    Later, at the motel, you want to sleep

    and dream something far off

    like golden light,

    a walk through eucalyptus at home,

    water held icy in your two cupped hands.


    -Sean Gillihan


    © 2001 by Sean Gillihan


    Sean Gillihan lives in Klamath Falls, Oregon. His writing has appeared in numerous journals, including Northern Lights, Hubbub, Clackamas Literary Review and the anthology, Writing On Water. He has been awarded a Walden Residency Fellowship, and an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship.

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