A Collection of Poems
by Tom Snarsky
Frustrated Observer
The thin trail of slime
that observation leaves
is a pillar of our several
ways of communicating
with one another, & then
the distance is only
a small part of its life,
an etching by a silver-
smith whose entire
family is dead but who
smokes only Newports
in your dad’s garage,
which he knows his
way around like a fine gob-
let or a cheap sword you
would never have known
was made of real silver.
Experimental Spotlight
I’m holding this basket way out
Over the river and it’s got
Precious goods that may be alive
So if I drop the basket that I am
Holding way out over the river
I will be forced to tell
A story to the lover
On the other bank
Good Poem
Stay
Seagreen Satanism*
All of it was a strategy for displacement, nothing
More. Embarrassment was far (but not too far)
From its mind; I have a witness in the wings & he
Can be brought to bear on almost anything, for a
Price. We have entered deceivership and the re-
Sults are every bit as ugly as Father’s Day. Don’t
Worry, I’ve been told medicinal herbs this size
Are normal, at least at this age. When his tem-
Per has calmed check with me again and I’ll let
You know about anything I have that might help.
Passionate chance might have to take it from
Here: I am worried that the laundromat will act
As a third pair of wings, but this groundless fear
Emerged only yesterday from the heat of a dream
I had about John Ashbery. There’s no sense in
Arguing about it now — at least, not until sunrise.
- title taken from René Crevel
The Archives of Truth Written in Letters of Blood
This is not an epistolary dream —
Maybe you’ll like the negations better
You & I are far from actuality
& the tightrope we usually walk
Together
I have never lied to you but I have
Certainly made mistakes
I never told you about
Like for example when I said Truth is
Like hearing a voice you cannot read
Or Houses
Ninety a sun color, decimated
quick. Embarrassing thought with
a sneeze wrested from time
before the surgeon came
and the flutter in my heart man-
aged to evaporate. We
are summoning discipline
to its sticking point, and nature
cannot horribly build any more
horrible things. I scampered down
a forbidden path I think
but not in a cool way or anything.
how to get sick
i put this
in a poem
so that if
it shows up
in my auto-
suggest his-
tory it will
not seem
suspicious
First published in Fluland
Tom Snarsky lives in Chelsea, Massachusetts among stacks of books and ungraded papers with his fiançée Kristi and their two cat children, Niles and Daphne. He is on Twitter @TomSnarsky and he is the author of Threshold, a chapbook of poems available from Another New Calligraphy.
