Drinks and drugs and love and stories and jokes and books and Tom Cheshire

• Karen Rugg Cheshire

Since the early ’90s, Tom Cheshire has been prowling Atlanta in a number of roles: journalist, poet, musician, and drunken instigator. If you’ve been around, you’ve probably come across some of his projects like Dry Ink, a now-defunct arts and music blog, or his punk rock outfits the Rent Boys, All Night Drug Prowling Wolves, and West End Motel.

In his new book Just a Little Piece of Heartburn, Cheshire offers up 50 new poems, reproduced without edits in their original form — handwritten on bar napkins and scraps of paper. The result is a sort of cycle, snippets from a life swallowed best in one gulp (Cheshire asserts that it takes only “29 minutes to read it slowly”). The book vacillates between memory and spontaneity with all the energy and velocity of a raised glass.

There are moments when the poems amount to a manifesto familiar to long-time Cheshire devotees. In “What I Live For,” the author counts “Drinks and drugs/and love (sometimes)/and books and music/and stories and jokes/and hugs and kisses/and drinks and drugs” as most essential. But while the poems are deliciously boozy, what sticks about the book is its emotional frankness and lyrical cadence, its ruminations on childhood, friendship, loss and sweeping romance cut with the appropriate amount of raunch. Read it at the bar, try it aloud and with different accents, rip it up and mail pieces to your friends. You’ll know the pleasures of sharing a pint with Tom.

Creative Loafing met up with Cheshire over a glass of wine to discuss the book, some of his favorite lines, and the importance of a daily cry.