Lowery SAFFRON Workstand with Side Clamp (for Kristi) & Dovekie

two new poems from Tom Snarksy

Lowery SAFFRON Workstand with Side Clamp

for Kristi

I’m trying to get better

by force of will so we can eat

sushi without me scream-sneezing

near the other couples, no now we are old

& full of sleep, or I am, on the couch

watching Abbott Elementary

we were both teachers

so we know the mall plotline

could happen. Last night, before bed

I gave you a lymph massage as delicately

as I could, one YouTube video and a

prayer, snuck back downstairs

& read a book but fell

asleep only after coming back

up to be with you, as I always will—

I’d break god’s arms if he tried to stop me

keep me from your sleep-breathing

in then out, my tide, my body

clock, my only season

---

Dovekie

My heart is in the Lost Children’s Tent

Flicking matches. Do you ever pretend

The sun is a golden grape someone left

In the sky, that you could pull it down off

Its vine and end the world, but you are

Merciful so you don’t, waiting there for

Your parents with the sharpest knife in the

Universe having cut your brain in half already

Now your whole life is holding the halves

Together, being nice at parties, in meetings,

Drawing pay like a clock in pencil

With some details wrong the doctor says

Are indicative, but don’t confirm anything

By themselves. It’s hard to do anything alone.

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Tom Snarsky is from the obsolete Dutch huizenblaas – huizen is a kind of sturgeon, and blaas is a bladder, or German Hausenblase, meaning essentially the same.