Book of Hours

There was still soap in the pressure
cooker so the onions foamed
in their butter & you cried again
re-chopping. The rain
pattered its too-clean
parallel like a magician mid-card
-trick who really needs you not to see
his shoulder. The anglerfish’s corpse
was so small—in the first video it looked
like a sea turtle, ascending,
but in this video its body disappeared
against the narrator’s black glove.
Quesadilla got one flower from the bouquet
& played with it until it fell apart. 

Book of Hours

I am a record of things I have tried
To keep secret or going or both. I’m
Loath to remember my most shameful
Moments but I don’t have to bc god
Takes care of that anyway, folds them in
Like a kind of overlay, guilt-chyron
That can run at any time, in line at
Martin’s after the cashier sneezed and the
Lady behind us left in what? Quiet
Disgust? And the kid obviously felt
Bad and now somewhere another ribbon
Twirls onto the maypole of involuntary
Memory, a sister-eyed child running
Around and around with no way of knowing
Who the leader is 

Book of Hours

Heaven forfend the heron should be here
Early, signaling the groundhog
Was wrong and spring

Is already cleaning
Up for company, god running
His thumb through the dust. You’re depressed

By the maps that show the storm
Blowing southeast of us, meaning
What it means but also more time

Clocked in at the hardest job on the planet,
The one I quit but that you still do
Even though anyone

Who’s done it will tell you it makes you
Want to die, which the heron almost never
Does by a road, it’s usually so near to water





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.

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