Poetry

Tom Kimmel's The Sweetest & The Meanest is now available in paperback,
hardcover and in audio book format!

Audio book also available for digital download!

To purchase and download an e-book version of The Sweetest & the Meanest (to read on your computer or electronic  book reader), visit one of these fine e-book sites:

• ebook Mall
• Powells
• Diesel ebooks
• Books on Board

Featured Poems

Blink 182

In the window seat beside me
on the flight to New York
sits a boy of perhaps 12,
A thin, pretty boy with a thatch
of spiky blond hair.
Judging by his designer back pack
I imagine he is taking
that look as far as his upper crust
parents or private school
will let him get away with.
He is wearing headphones,
listening to the CD player in his lap
for the first hour of the flight,
carefully changing CDs
a couple of times.
I am in a good mood,
needing a shower, having
barely made my flight, as usual.
I am wearing my Titans cap
and a sleeveless flannel shirt,
thinking I look unusually young
and hip for man my age.
When the boy removes his phones again
I introduce myself and ask
what he is listening to.
“Blink 182” he replies.
“Are they good?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “You've
never heard of them?”
“No,” I say. I tell him,
“Hey I'm a musician, too. I've
made some records. In fact,
I've got one right here.
Would you like to hear a song?”
Without looking up
he raises a slender palm
toward me and says,
“No thanks.”

• The Sweetest and The Meanest
• Cannibals
• My Cat

Praise for The Sweetest & the Meanest...

"Denise cried when she read MaMa's Table. I said, My goodness honey, it ain't that good, is it?"

- Mark Germino


"Tom Kimmel is a treasure. Songman, rocker, poet, seeker, troubadour... always scratching away for the greater truths like a miner for gold. In these poems, you will recognize and celebrate your own humanity " warts and all" and know it's okay to be a human being. Yeah!"

- Marshall Chapman


"Tom does with poems what Eudora Welty did with short stories . . . sweet (but unsentimental), understated little slices of actual human life as experienced here in the south, or anywhere, for that matter. He puts you so close to those beauty/truth/goodness moments of the heart (the ones we've all known but defy description), that you're suddenly in them before you realize it.Like Eudora, he speaks softly, sneaks up on you -- and then nails you. Wonderful stuff."

- Pierce Pettis


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