Tom Healy

Tom Healy Poems

Tom Healy Biography

Tom Healy was raised on a farm in Mount Vision, New York. He earned a BA in philosophy from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. His first collection of poetry, What the Right Hand Knows (2009), was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry. Of Healy’s spare yet evocative poems, poet Carol Muske-Dukes commented in the Huffington Post: “From the near-cheerful merciless poems about childhood on a farm and the brutal lives of animals to big city glamour with new possibilities of flight from a flawed paradise—there is the sharp edge of art … keeping things in perspective.” Healy has been a leader in the arts, international affairs, and philanthropy throughout his career. Active in the New York City arts scene, Healy operated a gallery in Chelsea with Pat Hearn and Matthew Marks from 1994 until 2000. He has been executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a member of President Clinton’s White House Council on AIDS, and a visiting fellow at the Gorée Institute in Dakar, Senegal. He currently serves as chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, which oversees the Fulbright program worldwide. He was appointed to the Fulbright board by President Barack Obama. Healy has taught at the Pratt Institute, New York University, and the New School, as well as the New York State Writers Institute, the Port Townsend Writers Conference, and the John Ashbery School of Poetics. He has a regular column in the Huffington Post and is a contributing editor to BOMB Magazine, Creative Time Reports, and ArtInfo.com.)

The Best Poem Of Tom Healy

A Possum Entering the Argument

We're talking about
when we met
and you say

it was easier
to fall for me thinking
(I'll remember

this pause)
it was likely I'd be
dead by now.

Talking. Falling.
Thinking. Waiting . . .
Have I

undone
what you've tried to do?
You say no.

You say the surprise
of still being
is something

being built—
the machine of our living,
this saltwork of luck,

stylish, safe,
comfortable and
unintended.

Meanwhile, I haven't
had the opportunity
to tell you, but

our lovely little dog
has just killed
a possum.

Maybe it's unfair,
a possum entering
the argument here.

But I lay it down
before us:
because an ugly

dying possum
played dead
and didn't run,

its dubious cunning
was brought to an end
outside our door

by our brutal, beautiful
and very pleased
little dog.

So how do I say
that this is not
about death or sadness

or even whether
you really
first loved me

waiting, thinking
I'd be
dying young?

It's just that
standing there
a few minutes ago

holding a dead possum
by its repellent
bony tail,

I was struck by how
eerily pleased I was
to be a spectator

to teeth, spit,
agony and claw,
feeling full of purpose,

thinking how different
in our adversaries
we are from possums.

We try love—
the fist of words,
their opening hand.

And whether we play
dead or alive,
our pain, the slow

circulation of happiness,
our salt and work,
the stubborn questions

we endlessly
give names to
haunt us with choice.

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