Tom Snarsky

@tomsnarsky

He collected things, each of a holy intention in isolation, but pagan in the variety of his choice. William Gaddis 📚 @anothernewcalligraphy.com, @ornithopterpress.bsky.social, @animalheartpress.bsky.social, @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social

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Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 24d

A thousand dreams are burning inside me, softly, under the smoke Arthur Rimbaud, tr. Lehman

EVENSONG

I’m in the barber chair again
A sitting angel with a beer mug in his fist
A pipe like a gentleman dangling from my mouth
My belly is curved, so is my neck

A thousand dreams are burning inside me, softly, under the smoke
Like old coughballs in my blue winter coat
When my heart is sad it bleeds like wood
Spurred on by the dark yellow gold of its sweat

Then, having carefully swallowed my dreams,
Thirty or forty mugs worth, I get up
Collect my body, walk outside, and look up

And sweet as The Saviour of hyssops and cedar
I piss toward the dark heavens, in a high flying arc,
Receiving the grand approval of the naked stars.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 25d

the recording of last night’s Night Light reading is now live!! it was such a joy to hear @lowghost.bsky.social, Dorsía Smith Silva, & @foreverasheley.bsky.social read their work — check it out at the 🔗 below :)

A screenshot of Dorsía Smith Silva from the July 2026 Night Light reading

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 25d

Jean Arp, tr. Joachim Neugroschel

one day we rustle off
like dead leaves
and turn into dust
and change back into sparkles of stars
and sing and drift
blissful in cloaks of fire

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 26d

Tom Clark

And Now to the Stars

A kiss on the glove
At four blows
During lunch I dreamed of mud
But the neck of the waiter
A pink over the blue of the mud
Around your shoes
Was a something
A token I carried
To remember this love was like plastic

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 26d

Jeni Olin

HO CHI MINH
For Larry
I'll tell you what's great is the prison poems of Ho Chi Minh.
Meanwhile in Naval Observatory time
I felt right at home in your home, right alongside you-Your animal sincerity intrigued me. You Made me feel like a battered spouse falling through Cold cream with crushes on everyone against
A snickering Prada landscape. I lay down my rod & staff, comforted I think you felt me rage in an easy rosy world & this appealed to your Forensic instinct If you stay still, I could begin To love the living & among the dead
Only you & your bloody wig tufting the Suffolk coast at night. But whatever.
Blasting bone health insurance in the Ripped Bodice Wing
I don't always seize the human pathetic moment
The fluctuating anguish of day-to-day, minute-to-minute living
Where you reign so transparent & in relief in my pantheon of failed crushes
I could make bark rubbings of your arterial tree You could never leave me alone & then you could.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 27d

it’s #weirdpoemwednesday, where’s your big rain hat? 4 from Lyn Hejinian’s The Book of a Thousand Eyes~

I'll risk failure
Courting favor, I'll court failure
I failed geology, I failed Greek, I failed to show up when expected on
Wednesday
Memory fails
Flags fail
Luck fails
Curs snarl at the failed
Families bury the failed
Fail farther, fail fatter, fail in a particular field of endeavor Failure is succinct and sucks sugar
Failure figures
I am a failed detective, a failed botanist, a failed equestrian I am a failed mariner I am an errant failure
So, this is what happens to failures!
Failure

I is that which moves across its life
I am scratching, chewing, poking, and whispering into my surroundings
The hunting directly follows what I see
It is an exciting fact that we are sad because we weep, afraid because we
run
My desires tempt the knowledge I hunt
Experience flees and makes dreams probable

Love rules below and the frogs groan
The frogs groan flat

I long to look like Audrey Hepburn under a big rain hat

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 27d

James Tate

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 28d

happy #twopageplustuesday from Joseph Donahue (from Red Flash on a Black Field)

WHERE EVERY HOLLOW HOLDS A HALLOW
I sleep in a tree. At night, the tree flies to a beach where the pebbles are gems.
Thunderclap: the moon in bits. An office,
a chair in front of a desk, a hitch in the interview: your advocate, it seems, is a Nazi.
Nervosina, in the well of a pillow, who now whispers my name?
The sky's a dirty sponge.
The earth, a bucket.
A billing fiasco looms.
Meanwhile, on a red field wet light gleams. (Was it so long ago we drew the shades at lunch, then ate pound cake, fresh from the freezer, and Dad sipped vodka as we sat in the dark, playing comedy albums?)
An escapee lurks by a school.
Everywhere, choppers and cops.
But for kids, the lockdown is a weird carnival on an autumn night, so Egyptian.
A dry run for the Angel of Death.
The doorway of the forest is

brushed with blood. Help me.
My mouth's out of whack.
Lies leap out. A white mist hides the lake. The air glows.
A red spine shoots through a leaf, the flame of all that will fall.
I sleep in a barrel. At night, the barrel flies to a mountain.
The cliffs are sapphire.
Where the Hesperus went up in flames the former landlord of Charles Olson offers me planks from his room.
The mesh of the fence blurs the hog wallow by the reef.
The hills blow sideways.
Lakes hang in the sky.
Trees lean over the shade.
Herons, the color of water.
A ghost floats inside a rainbow.
Overhead can be seen a sun toward which open rare blossoms of thought.
(Crowded room, we spoke as if in bed, marveling.)
While along back roads, the new law ruins all.
I want to bury my head

in the hood of my car.
Then a college dean collars me, crows to all under the reunion tent:
Meet the one among you renowned for classes missed due to venereal misadventure!
I sleep in a gazebo. At night the gazebo flies to a desert.
The spiders are feldspar.
Sky-wide camera flash.
Let our eyes open. Or else the sun become an estate that will not survive the survivors, all light lost in an Iliad of attorneys.
God loves Kansas.
Revivals roll west. We could argue we are now air, but the wind on our skin says no. We could show, in the 1840s, a silversmith rebuilding the temple of Solomon in secret as a cider mill on a hill.
We could be lying helpless, scenes of glory passing before my eyes. (Historians call this the "fire zone.")
We could dream the earth is

a greasy aluminum pan, the ocean, tied down with garbage bags, green and seething. Beach, a gulag of mud, couples in the mud, limbs streaked with mud, children playing with mud, bathers with towels crossing the mud, down to the plastic-covered sea.
While I was away, who lived?
While I flew deep, who defamed me?
While I soaked in the light of the fire of Heaven, while I opened the archive of what is, who paid for these alterations?
Who signed this card, had my spasms?
While I felt what perfection was like, while I walked with Tobias, who changed the locks?
While the throne shone, while ancestors kissed me, what polar cold swept down?
While the undulation broke wild, who reviewed my scandals?
While the whirlwind held me, who broke my bones?
Who underbid me?

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 28d

Donna Brook

The School of Pain
No one comes here to learn what we teach.
They all want to be better off for it, to know its applications, to grow from the experience, to go through just once.
What we offer
is the fact that it hurts and is not the same as pleasure.
We've found
anything else, or less, or more is not pain.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 29d

where light drinks the world, Deborah Digges

GREETER OF SOULS
Ponds are spring-fed, lakes run off rivers.
Here souls pass, not one deified, and sometimes this is terrible to know
three floors below the street, where light drinks the world, siphoned like music through portals.
How fed, that dark, the octaves framed faceless.
A memory of water.
The trees more beautiful not themselves.
Souls who have passed here, tired, brightening.
Dumpsters of linen, empty
gurneys along corridors to parking garages.
Who wonders, is it morning?
Who washes these blankets?
Can I not be the greeter of souls?
What's to be done with the envelopes of hair?
If the inlets are frozen, can I walk across?
When I look down into myself to see a scattering of birds, do I put on the new garments?
On which side of the river should I wait?

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· 29d

Lâle Müldür, translator unknown

if the wind could be given as a gift i would have wanted to give the wind to you. in a yellow-leafed forest two deer are jumping in the air and kissing.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 12

so excited to announce the lineup for this coming week’s Night Light reading — @lowghost.bsky.social, Dorsía Smith Silva, Chandler Hyde Camerato, & @foreverasheley.bsky.social are going to read some brilliant work this Thursday!! sign up to listen in below :) 💡

NIGHT LIGHT
THURSDAY 7/16
9PM EASTERN
ZOOM
MIKE BAGWELL
DORSÍA SMITH SILVA
CHANDLER HYDE CAMERATO
NAA ASHELEY ASHITEY

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 12

happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜 feel free to share small poems you wrote or ones you love by other poets :) here’s a new one of mine, in four lines~

Quatrain

Painting the baseboards, faith in the future
Four fawns’ legs folded in the high grass
Unwashed duck eggs letting some light in
Love’s future’s split wick half-lit by the past

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 12

Xu Wei, tr. Jonathan Chaves

I ONCE DID A BAMBOO PAINTING FOR SOMEBODY — NOW HE WANTS ME TO DO ANOTHER. I HAVE WRITTEN THIS TO ANSWER HIM.

This bamboo I painted a long time ago.
Now you want me to do another?—Impossible!
When the sparrow grows old
it becomes a clam in the sea.
You ask it to turn back into a sparrow,
but how can it fly again?

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 11

Czesław Miłosz, trs. the author & Lillian Vallee

ENCOUNTER

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

1936

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 11

it’s Friday night, let’s tear up reading this Catherine Bull poem

LONG DAY
The triumph of the day: that the old dog made it 12 hours without peeing in the house, success in her success at staying asleep,
certainly no success in the 12 hours 'til I made it home, because work, because work, because work, work which kept me late and made me cry, or nearly, because I can't tell what should or shouldn't make me mad, what is or isn't mine
to question, am I right, am I right to have said it, she stayed asleep and didn't wake to notice
that she had to pee, once you've thought about it you can't stop thinking about it, but if you haven't you can just dream, dream of running, of finding the squirrel, of barking away some old raccoon, of bringing home a stick, a great big chewy stick, of getting to keep it.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 10

Charles Bukowski

the gods smile down,
the gods smile down,
the gods smile down.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 10

happy Friday midday from Philip Whalen

Friday Already Half
-way shot in the ass, nearly
noontime lunch
Can you remember the things you're supposed
to remember:
your past lives, the thoughts of others
and the unthinkable?
*

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 10

Louis Gilmore

IMPROVISATION
If I were a peacock I would watch you With a thousand eyes
If I were a centipede I would track you With an hundred feet
If I were an octopus I would hold you With eight arms
If I were a cat I would love you
During nine lives
If I were a god
I would possess you In three persons
LOUIS GILMORE

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 9

Why do I love what fades? Mark Strand

The Guardian

The sun setting. The lawns on fire.
The lost day, the lost light.
Why do I love what fades?

You who left, who were leaving,
what dark rooms do you inhabit?
Guardian of my death,

preserve my absence. I am alive.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 9

It’s harder than it used to be to talk to people. Ralph Adamo

Love Is Ended And The Grave Also

These are not the times to fall down beating out one's last breath.
Everywhere reminders that it starts with your own mouth.
Your lover tells you you were laughing in your sleep.
Pain refuses to stick to you anymore.
Women float down upon San Francisco like ashes.
It's harder than it used to be to talk to people.
What can you think waving to an ascending plane?
We're crazed by the enormity of our images.
Friendships have vanished from the sidewalks.
You make love to the one you're surprised at.
Some took me to graveyards where they used to play.
I kept my mouth shut. No use to question a woman proving
her devotion.
Besides it's true that any fast will give your guts a rest.
I work, I sleep, and sometimes one's the other.
Hands put out themselves and stretch to close a window.
Whatever's out there floating down has wings or it wouldn't be.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 9

Antonin Artaud, tr. Victor Corti

The little lost poet
Leaves his celestial post
With an unearthly idea
Clutched to his shaggy heart.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 8

Philip Whalen

PW His Recantation

O deodar tree
I haven’t learned how to live

Both of us far from the mountains
I have not adjusted, not adapted

No one must blame you

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 8

happy #weirdpoemwednesday! ➰ feel free to share weird poems you wrote or love :) here are four snippets from Alice Notley’s weird & wonderful book Disobedience~

no return no return
There was never any similarity between myself and prices.
... Winternet, the sadness of River of No Return technological river ...
oh, technologically, I want to go back would go backwards if I could

If a little boy or man is Mark and I am Markette myself, a commercial territory let me offer you peaches my sins, this is another one—in a good world I might not feel like writing poems would I be happy

•.. I meant to make a mouth for a finer place like the far sky,
that will not hurt us, as we hurt ourselves?
No, I'm enjoying making mean remarks about everyone, because I am the Soul, misunderstood I'm pure, wise, and bitchy: that's not
contradictory. I intend to be grouchy throughout my eternity.

It isn't silly enough, he says, it's too beautiful:
That's why I look like a detective instead.
Silly enough for what?
This life.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 8

Paul Colinet

PARABLE
The white house is all black. The black house is all white. They dwell in the same fable. They naturally look alike.
Their name is patience. They contemplate their landscape. They open up in closing.
They are dressed separately. They live in each other. They keep away from large stars. They never trade places.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 7

indeed it is!

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 7

Antonin Artaud, trs. Eshleman & Bador

MORAL

Don’t tire yourself more than need be, even at the price of founding a
culture on the fatigue of your bones.

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 7

The cover of Dresses from the Old Country by Laura Read

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 7

happy #twopageplustuesday! let ’er rip with a poem that runs longer, that you wrote or that you love by another poet :) here’s one I really like by Laura Read, with one of my favorite first lines of all time~

RUINS
The night is a black book, Dave a wet shadow. We're drinking like we were
too young to do, in three different bars because Dave says we have to stay
on the move, and we're talking about how we used to drive the freeway in the middle
of the night, at the beginning of our lives, listening to music loud, leaning out windows.
I run my hand over the surface of the table where someone has glued a page
from the dictionary, and suddenly I want to read all the words, but the past is sitting
across from me. For nights after,

from the dictionary, and suddenly I want to read all the words, but the past is sitting
across from me. For nights after,
I don't sleep—you don't sleep if you're floating,
no matter how soft your body feels in the water. It's still water. I never knew
I could get to the bottom of this.
My hand hurt when I was a child
and we had to fill a white page with squares of different colors, cover all of it with black,
and then use one blade of our scissors to carve out a design in the dark wax.

This week we are going to a place called Ruins.
I don't know who else will be there—
my black-haired father taking up a whole booth in the corner, the daughter I never had
rocking in her chair, her hair long and thick and caught in the slats. She is humming
so loud the waiter asks her to be quiet.
I tell him to bring her the drink
Dave orders, a drink I've never heard of, dream drink, dark red. She's wearing
one of the sweaters I left in my drawer in Paris. Black angora with pearls

dream drink, dark red. She's wearing
one of the sweaters I left in my drawer in Paris. Black angora with pearls
at the neck. I never wanted to see my head coming up out of it again.
Let's get out of here. I know a field with an empty barn. You can see deer
through the blown-out windows but inside kids have sprayed the walls
with profanity. And isn't that what this is like?

Tom Snarsky@tomsnarsky· Jul 6

Joseph Ceravolo