FIVE POEMS by TOM SNARSKY
It’s Not Real If I Don’t Look
Tired. The teenths of May are coming slowly, like you do on good drugs. I invited absolutely everyone I know to the party and only the peacock showed up, ate a hot dog and singed his tail by the fire pit. He said Oh wow.
Sonnet
I wish money was more like a cat than a dog
I bit time & it bent so I knew it was fake
Like wage caps or the full moon Bruce
Almighty pulls down to earth for Jennifer
Aniston’s character, whose name is Grace
At this time of writing for $8.99 on Amazon
You can buy a print of this still from the film:
[Alt text: Bruce holds Grace’s shoulders
As they both stare up & left out of frame]
The seller’s item description gives a little
warning: The image you see is true
to the quality of the photograph, including,
[sic] coloring. [sic] focus and lighting.
It will not be better than what you see.
Sad Movie
You can beat fear by being
distracted; the axe
murderer comes in to get
you & you’re stuck
on a fiendish puzzle
or trying to make sense
of something your ex said
millennia ago, water
un-under the bridge, drawn
up like weird battle plans
for the anteclimactic fight
where the good guy suffers
the defeat he will learn from
the Junior Mints long gone
Dove Pan
I think I understood death
best when I went to bed
the night the literary magazine
had promised to respond
to my poems; the difference
with death was not having
to deal with waking up
to no response yet, instead
getting to let the dice roll
ad whatever on whether
anyone would make anything
of what I’d done or not,
a snow cone just about to be
told its blue raspberry fortune
Untitled
That windshield-wiper laugh. It’s summer on another planet, one with shorter years. Pinpricks of history deflating our stable point in the orbit. An Austrian grape, too sweet to make wine from, pops in the sun. Limp lemon father, clockmaker, go nowhere that love wouldn’t go