Dreck

Tom Snarsky

Angels & Demons

When it’s overdrawn I stop looking
for a few days, eat Goldfish & water

think about the two deer Kristi saw
standing in the Shenandoah River

one of its shallowest parts
she didn’t get a picture she was on her way

to school the cost of turning around
most mornings is too great

bc logically you could end
up back home or in the womb

neither a place a school
would employ you from

the coronet player chewing gum
to keep spit in his mouth counteract

the meds’ effects
winter so late

it’s May in the northern hemisphere
it’s Mary McCarthy writing something

funny but ultimately sad
it’s people trying

to claim the worst
movie of your childhood has

Redeeming
Qualities

what to do when you find the form
of a lie seductive, when you put a comma in

for the first time
since line two

when you start to author
yourself with this lie’s byline

&, if pressed,
would defend

things that only pass
muster in retrospect

bc we miss them


Customer Since

To be loved despite having bad skin
sometimes, and bad thoughts
a lot. To be the queen of lottery tickets
and mergansers and snow.

The ancient magnolias, standing
at the back of the live show
with no recording device
besides themselves, flirt

like dandelions.
It is a steady, brutal mixture of fog and life
that keeps philosophy going, the fire outside
its little tent in a glade

not made for shadow play, not enough
direct sun. I peel the star off
my face; the pimple that was underneath

is almost invisible, now. It’s spring.


Messengers

I wet the check and pulled it apart

I threw it in a bag with the cat pee pads

& the buttered remains of a pastry

-stained paper towel. My identity

If it is stolen that way

Deserves to go with the thief.

A rare day of March heat

Brought with it a burst of winged termites

On April Fools, a colony attempting to settle

In a rotting board under the threshold

Weighing in my head the difference

Between exterminator and pest control

You can’t really find the former anymore

The latter is coming Friday

Good Friday a fortnight early

For the bugs, who can only fly

For a few days before they shed their wings

& try to mate. They are called “alates”

When they swarm, I repeat credulously

From my search. From the Latin

For “winged.” I feel stupid about angels

Believing in them, wanting to analogize

Them into my life, wanting to annunciate

Or be annunciated to. The control

Hides the death, puts it on

The outside, makes it

Treatable. The problem is death

Is a system: if you poison a rodent

And your cat eats what he thinks

Is a free lunch, suddenly death becomes

A shared secret between them,

One you gave them but somehow yourself

Don’t yet know. Not in on the joke

Did not receive an invitation to the party

Although the rest of the class did

High winds & dead pets

One letter away

From poets





Tom Snarsky is the author of Light-Up Swan and Reclaimed Water (Ornithopter Press), A Letter From The Mountain & Other Poems (Animal Heart Press), and MOUNTEBANK (Broken Sleep Books). He lives in the mountains of northwestern Virginia with his wife Kristi and their cats.