by Tom Snarsky
I felt like masturbating
I felt like crying
It was the twenty-first century
Already
A quarter over
There had been artistic movements
& wars
My debts had been repackaged
Countless times
The enemy of my enemy
Followed me
On Twitter, now called
Ex-Marines shot themselves in the head in their aunts’ basements
We lost touch almost as a whole
Category
We listened to music for evaluative purposes
Had to turn off Shostakovich a recording of quartet #10 that churned too fast like history
A choir with one boy who couldn’t sing
But tried to follow, quietly
Teachers like cigarettes fired or quit
My memory got so bad
I said the same thing a hundred times
Into the wax cylinder
Like the moon changing in the same ways
Like the water falling back to earth
The killdozer guy said it was like people couldn’t see
The 50-ton machine he was working on for a year and a half
Even though it sat there openly
In a shed, folks coming and going
“somehow their vision was clouded”
It was the twenty-first century
Eschatology
Minus clarity
All the new angels issued
Their wings & narcan
Doing their trainings from home
Tom Snarsky is the author of Light-Up Swan and Reclaimed Water, both from Ornithopter Press. His book A Letter From The Mountain & Other Poems is forthcoming from Animal Heart Press in 2025, and his book MOUNTEBANK is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books in 2026. He lives with his wife Kristi and their cats in the mountains of northwestern Virginia.