The Silver Cord

I am remodeling my bones. Pray for what
You want, if it is good, or if it’s something
Someone else can provide, ask them. Time
Is looking at you the whole way. I’ve started
Thinking magically about chess, like if I
Play for eighteen years I’ll be 50 & maybe ok.
An example of something I hope my kid’ll be
Better than me at, like math or volunteering
To fold the wash. Lots in that category,
Every flaw I’ve let fester & not fixed
Transmogrifies into next-generational
Hope, which it’s not lost on me isn’t the same
As doing the work to take care of myself,
Learn some standard openings,
How to develop pieces into a good
Mid-game board state like the one
Dante started from

Certainly, Here Is

the weather.
Tactile strategies for feeling more
loved. A list of terms
used in fencing. Several ideas
for a novel of ideas. The right thing to say
to a loved one you’ve pissed off.
True rhymes for “worry.”
The most-loved albums of the decade
before you were born.
Mild topics of conversation for people
you don’t know that well. English translation
of Ich fühle luft
von anderem planeten…the wind
at the beginning of Tarkovsky’s Mirror,
what it means. What it stands
for

General Repertoire

Wrong, like when you say there’s no such thing as and keep talking. Beautiful, like every possum. Egregious, like the number of times I wrote your name in seventh grade. Deflated, like a football or a philosophical account of truth. Inflated, like my opinion of the possum. Correct, also like my opinion of the possum, and probably too your opinion of me. Dead, like most languages, one hundred thousand plus. Alive, like this language, & you, for now.





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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