Tom Snarsky

I and my thoughts of you

Remember that old thorn bush
amazed by
its one flower

If I stood by it, would it be diminished
as an image must be when
it stands beside
what it’s an image of?

Norman MacCaig

Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social‬

When I go for a walk, dogs sniff between my legs. I still remember from another life when I cried to eat the flesh of god. The truth is we are holy, and we are buried to quiet the earth.

Barbara Reisner

DOTS EVERYWHERE I erased my legs and forgot to draw in the stilts. It looks like I’m floating but I’m not floating. Sometimes I draw you with fangs. I tell you these things because I love you. Some people paint with whiskey and call it social drinking. Some people paint drunk and put dots of color everywhere. In the morning the dots make them happy. I am putting dots of color everywhere and you are sleeping. Something has happened in the paint tonight and it is worth keeping. It’s nothing like I thought it would be and closer to what I meant. None of it is real, darling. I say it to you. Maybe we will wake up singing. Maybe we will wake up to the silence of shoes at the foot of the bed not going anywhere.

Richard Siken

new from above/ground press: Against Perfectionism & Other Poems, by Jon Cone Against Perfectionism & other poems  JON CONE $6 HINGE  Once upon a time  poetry told  us something.  It was a  map, an eyeglass. The name  ...

from Against Perfectionism & Other Poems, pub. @robmclennan.bsky.social: abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2025/09/new-...

AN ESSAY ON ONTOLOGICAL PRAGMATISM It is bitterly cold outside. The kitchen is cold. I thank the kettle. I thank the toaster. I thank the skillet. I thank the cutting board. I thank the knife. I thank the butter. I thank the water. I thank the raspberry jam. I thank the tea towel. I thank the coffee grounds I put into the compost tin. I thank the orange. I thank the orange peel. I thank the old round table. I thank the plate, the cup. The fork, the spoon. The small bowl of milk. The kitchen windows have ice. I must get window curtains. If you lean over the sink and look out the window at the far end of the street you see a pink aura announcing the sun’s arrival. I pick the cat's bowl up to clean it. I reach the cat food down from the cupboard. I thank the cat food and the cat bowl. The floor is dirty. It needs washing. I thank the floor.

I thank the knife.

Jon Cone

A three line poem that reads screen door-- one hundred sunrises in the baby's palm

For @tomsnarsky.bsky.social 's #smallpoemsunday one from @roblucastaylor.bsky.social 's Weather.

October Sun Glitter and sharpness sever sky from crowns today. No dulling the edge.

An October haiku from way back for #smallPoemSunday, published by UCity Review (also way back).
The weather is as clear today as when I wrote this.

Morning Song Today I am a bee burrowing into a glass jar of honey recognizing finally a sweet, still pool of my own making.

Hey @tomsnarsky.bsky.social's #smallpoemsunday, there's a real nice one in this @russellbrakefield.bsky.social book.

The End of Love We kiss farewell like a final goodbye. Were the very last of the Love People. Old love junk washes up in the mangroves.

Lesle Lewis

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Her Eldritch Quest Brigid, the Mother of Poetry, searches for her mate. Among all the xillions of poets she has foaled, she searches. She tells herself, surely he is there somewhere, among our children! A voice whispers look for the gull in the desert and, being the ancestor of poets, she knows just what is meant. A gull always knows where water is. But, who said that? And can she trust him?

#SmallPoemSunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social -- Her Eldritch Quest (which by the way is collected in my new book which is likely going to the printer *ahem* tomorrow.)

bsky.app/profile/raym...

I and my thoughts of you Remember that old thorn bush amazed by its one flower If I stood by it, would it be diminished as an image must be when it stands beside what it’s an image of? December 1968

happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜

feel free to participate by posting small poems you wrote, +/or small poems you love by somebody else :)

here’s one by Norman MacCaig~

"A blue horse born in my blood."

#poetry #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

It took me just six million years to get here with enough oxygen to breathe the sun and now you want me to give it up and go back to that starry night

Jack Clarke

The car books in Tom’s 2003 Toyota Camry: Wang Wei, Poems Basho, On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho Li Po and Tu Fu Sick Verse John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein James Tate, Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate Ariana Reines, Mercury Tomas Tranströmer, The Deleted World Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein (again) Dan Eastman, Watertown Shakespeare, Complete Sonnets Wallace Stevens, The Rock John Ashbery, Houseboat Days Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems

saying goodbye to my 2003 Toyota Camry tomorrow; grateful to the way it shuffled me for a decade, to & from teaching jobs in two states, and always had room for car books

absolutely Kess, thank you for your wonderful book!! :)

landscape of roses I sit upstairs in the bedroom and think of making love to you an afternoon of roses white sheets the blankets red I like the way you hold me your hands hollow and I move against your shadow seeing some dark rose

Susan Mernit

I feel of others’ affairs as though they were the water birds I watch floating idly on the water. My idleness comes only from sorrow.

Murasaki Shikibu, trs. Atsumi & Rexroth

Over and over again Tomorrow we’ll meet again as for the first time, though we've not crossed the river that’s both cruel and kind – that Lethe the ancients spoke about. And of the buried suns one will arrive and make bright the fields where Persephone must have passed: so many the flowers. We’ll not shrink when we skirt the entrance to the Underworld nor be blinded by that shell sauntering in on to the shore of everywhere. All myths, with the truth of myths. We’ll do it our way – with a look, with a touch and with the space between words where the truths live that we can find no words for. July 1984

Norman MacCaig

does all speech turn to song ?

Robert Lax

that’s my emotional support three-hour sad/confusing movie

A payphone rang. “Hello?” they answered. “Will you listen to me for five or so minutes?” the voice at the other end asked. “No,” they said, and didn’t hang up.

Jeff Clark

Love this

thank you Adrian! 💜🙏

been writing real slow & very little lately so means a lot that @crowjonah.com took this one — thank you Crow!

October 1, 2025 SONG Tom Snarsky Consciousness has felt too much lately like a house burning down in the rain, like teeth with no mouth to keep curfew, a crab apple-sized nodule of pain. When I think of how easily it’s ended— by death or by sleep or by chance— I feel that coarse need to extend it a bit like a hand down the pants

very grateful to be welcoming October with a new poem in @havehashad.com :)

Poem Percent out of work out of luck and house for sale out of dream out of promise and pride for sale out of law out of order and time run out

Joshua Norton

Jessica, it is so much easier to think of our lives, as we move under the brief luster of leaves, loving what we have, than to think of how it is such small beings as we travel in the dark with no visible way or end in sight.

Mark Strand

Home Sweet Home Sky Like whisky and Windows learn the Sky Sky like Whisky the Sky and Behind it Lamplight

Joseph Lease

7 hell, the whole prairie’s tired

Garin Cycholl