Tim Heerdink

Tim Heerdink

I am the author of three poetry collections, The Human Remains, Red Flag and Other Poems, Razed Monuments, and the novel, Last Lights of a Dying Sun. I am president of the Midwest Writers Guild. My short stories, The Tithing of Man and HEA-VEN2, won first and second place in the guild’s annual anthology contests. I also have poems published in Poetry Quarterly, Fish Hook, Flying Island, Kissing Dynamite, Auroras & Blossoms, Tanka Journal, Landslide Lit, As It Ought To Be, Rogue Wolf, and various anthologies. I graduated from USI with a BA in English and reside in Newburgh, Indiana with my wife, daughter, dog, and two cats.

Nameday Scratch

for Amber Heerdink

I’m itching to read a poem,
itching to make a sell.
Just me and my poems
on our way to Hell.

You can say today is just the same
like all the rest that pass,
but I’ll celebrate you, anyway,
for I’m that type of cat.

The type of cat who will fulfill
your prophecy of wilted flowers,
begging for the sun’s relief.
I’ll break the scheme
years of disappointment bring
when closed eyes look inward
and blink.

A new year and we’re both still here!
You with your thriller
while I hold a bundle of T.S. Eliot’s thoughts.
I don’t have the answers on God
or what all this means,
but damn me if my words don’t create
some sort of other reality
where the two of us can live
in poetic immortality
for the romantics of hereafter.
Shed not a tear as you age
         another year and continue to radiate
    with your beauty and attitude
                and curiosity to eavesdrop
              the drama Prufrock dared not bring
with his disturbance of the universe.
I’ll walk in the flames for you,
        letting my skin slide from this shell,
                      so you can blow out another candle
        before you kiss our yawning daughter
and say, goodnight.