Average Life
Running at you with hedge clippers
is a language you no longer know
how to act surprised at
The grammar puts dates in your mouth
& forces you to chew them
slowly (then quicker, then slower again)
I’d be willing to be distracted
by death if you’d just shut up
and stop asking me how love is
supposed to develop when no one
lamb seems any more polite
than the others, or any more likely
to wander off—
if there is a conversant dark-
ness creeping up in what I’ve said so far
I hope I can experience it
with you breathing
down my neck
the whole time
Intrigue
Let’s trade evils:
I forget every feeling
& stumble into strange midnights
where quotation doesn’t work
the way I’m used to so I try
to quote my friends & only darkness
comes out
It forms a giant heap
in the middle of the floor
& doesn’t take questions
It does have that mysterious in-
different look that makes it kind
of attractive but un-
less you’re drunk or brave or very
different from me you
will probably just
gaze at it
keep your distance
& leave it be
Poem with Last Line by Emad Matti
Every year of my life so far I’ve looked up
young artists who died
by suicide
when they were that many years
old. I hold them
in my head for one revolution
at a time, & then I graduate
to a different decisionmaker.
It helps, I think. A balance be-
tween maudlin & honest. It keeps
perspective close at hand, here
where, at the end of our mild day,
the death angel is coming for us all
Tom Snarsky teaches mathematics at Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts, USA.