Tom Snarsky
LightNews LightNews
banner
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Tom Snarsky
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
5.7K followers 4.8K following 3.5K posts
He collected things, each of a holy intention in isolation, but pagan in the variety of his choice.
—William Gaddis

📚 @anothernewcalligraphy.com, @ornithopterpress.bsky.social, @animalheartpress.bsky.social, @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social
Posts Replies Media Videos
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Michael Coffey
So what is it today? Dorchester...or such sounds. Or is it me? Does anybody know? Is it simply this: that limitation is again to be charmed?
November 17, 2025 at 7:47 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Robert Hass, after Kobayashi Issa
Napped half the day; no one punished me!
November 17, 2025 at 3:40 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
a mantra by Michael Donhauser, tr. Andrew Joron
Yet the tomato does not fall apart. Despite all dwindling, all softening. It remains the tomato on the windowsill. Redly round in front of the white window casement. In face of the impassive darkness of night.
November 17, 2025 at 2:07 AM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Paul Blackburn
OUTSIDE We know things but explain our motives like textbooks each day another exercise We speak until our voices exhaust themselves There is too much to say but what is said always the same The truest passion is the sycamore outside renewing itself easily without a word
November 16, 2025 at 7:47 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜

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

here’s one by the brilliant @bartonsmock.bsky.social~
MORAL NARCISSISM fossil, cloud... it’s okay to like your little life. I have proof.
November 16, 2025 at 2:35 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Elena Karina Byrne
I know I am heavy-handed like this. The disproportionate picture pulled from the black lake. The shape of the last breath in my mouth. I know I want to make a move, unmoored. Water reeds my hair, your hands part of my body. But there’s no going back. I am qualified to give myself a new name. Implicit display of bad temper. Revolt tourniquet flag tied around your thigh. I am Werther’s sorrow. Let no sanity save me. Hurry.
November 15, 2025 at 7:49 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
James Tate
Suburban Bison Joshua and I had decided to go bowling. Neither of us had bowled in years, and we didn’t really like to bowl, so it made no sense. We were driving down Route 9 when we spotted the buffalo herd. They were grazing in the snow, and something about their improbable heads made me catch my breath. I pulled over to the side of the road. “Why are they here?” Joshua asked. “I guess it’s some kind of cruel joke,” I said. “Well, it’s not funny,” he said. “They’re way too majestic. Buffalo are supposed to roam, that’s what the song says, not be penned up along some strip for tourists to see,” he said. “It beats bowling,” I said. And so we sat there for the next hour contemplating the life of the postmodern buffalo, deconstructing their owners, and never putting them back together again.
November 15, 2025 at 3:42 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Peter Reading
love is a fixèd star ha ha ha ha ha ha.
November 15, 2025 at 3:17 AM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Peter Reading for your Friday
After Sanraku Koshu Jailed for being drunk, but far from contrite, the bard, minus shoes, tie, belt, savoured steel grille, rank pallet, mused ‘Ah! Raw Material!’
November 14, 2025 at 7:53 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Albert York
A painting by Albert York of several striking red flowers, perhaps carnations, in a vase. The vase is tightly framed, so there is very little room on any side beyond the redness of the flowers. The brushwork is visible such that the longer the eye lingers on a particular flower or leaf or stem or other place in the painting, the more it develops a topology, a personality, a voice.
November 14, 2025 at 4:11 AM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Emmanuel Hocquard, tr. Norma Cole
REMEMBER the ruins the dry grass the sun at three o’clock fatigue & the house of the tragic poet
November 13, 2025 at 7:53 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
sad minds think alike,

Mary Ruefle
Go Verbatim I live in the figurative world where nothing exists not even a chair except the one I am sitting on as I walk le boulevard when Francie comes up and pulls it out from under me. You live in a fantasy world! she exclaims upon examining it. Et tu, Francine, I say, what is your mind made of? Disappearing soap or a candle that won’t blow out? And when I had her weeping I said Francie sit down, teach me how to say sad minds think alike, you know, the repetitious way.
November 13, 2025 at 3:17 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Robert Lax
some or der some or der some cha os some cha os
November 13, 2025 at 4:07 AM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Joy Harjo
I release you I release you I release you I release you
November 12, 2025 at 7:53 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Gillian McCain
Touch I’m a girl, there aren’t many of us left. Time to take the bullet by the hole. Certain designs rely on not being seen. I never denied I was just an assemblage of staves. Collapsing around us. This means not taking our rooms so seriously. We can’t see the wallpaper (pink scotties) or a misprint in the proof. Sometimes skin has to do all the talking. Recto, verso. But can you even enter them, speeding through the story? Once upon a time a golf tee punctured our water-bed. I thought I was going to live forever, immoral. I thought a lot of things, the court artist had trouble with my nose. Elongated, normal. A little lower.
November 12, 2025 at 2:54 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Lorine Niedecker
And what you liked or did — no matter once the moon dipped down and fish rose from under
November 12, 2025 at 4:11 AM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
“thin tunnels of light.” Peter Everwine, from a water-stained copy of Keeping the Night
Distance The light pulling away from trees, the trees speaking in shadows to whatever listens . . . Something as common as water turns away from our faces and leaves. The stars rise out of the hills —old kings and animals marching in their thin tunnels of light. Once more I find myself standing as on a dark pier, holding an enormous rope of silence.
November 11, 2025 at 9:17 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
living/have loved will love

Wanda Coleman
A&W —after Louis Zukofsky we spark lights inside one another living/have loved will love no one knows the truth about love. not all love is good (then that ain’t it, some say, obsession greed indulgence lust all better words) perhaps it is an unexpected stranger washing away apprehension with rapt tongue startling beasts from slumber who roar their hunger to the tireless stars, those tiny eyes gathering visions like fishermen casting for fish seaside whatever we’ve recorded one of the other wonder is there’s still so learnable much wherever we put our words is our poem
November 11, 2025 at 5:04 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Alice Notley
TO IMPRESS YOU All alone, eating winter strawberries dipped in dry sherry, & reading SUPER JOE: THE JOE NAMATH STORY
November 11, 2025 at 4:34 AM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Small poem~
Today I feel like an old movie ticket left in death’s jacket, a rain check because the battery in the captioning device died We pulled up the pallet and the mouse minnowed away, hiding again under a plastic bag from 1991 Do you think the moon is ever like this isn’t worth it Hush I’m blanching one pea for the fish
November 11, 2025 at 12:42 AM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
And you tremble no longer,

Barbara Guest
Safe flights To no longer like the taste of whisky This is saying also no to you who are A goldfinch in the breeze, To no longer wish winter to have explanations To lace your shoes in the snow With no need to remember, To no longer pull the two blankets Over your shoulders, to no longer feel the cold, To no longer pretend in the flower There is a secret, or in the earth a tomb, And no longer water on stone hurting the ear, Making those five noises of thunder And you tremble no longer, To no longer travel over mountains, Over small farms No longer the weather changing and the atmosphere Causing delicate breaks where the nerves confuse, To no longer have your name shouted And your birthmark again described, To no longer fear where the rapids break A miniature rock under your canoe, To no longer repeat the mirror is water, The house is a burden to the weak cyclone, You are under a tent where promises perform And the ring you grasp as an aerialist Glides, no longer.
November 10, 2025 at 5:17 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Rumi, tr. Barks
This longing you express is the return message. The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. That whining is the connection.
November 10, 2025 at 3:34 AM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Joe Wenderoth
Moon River what is true is what seems the most to repeat location without mercy the blank bark of old animals the house the way the snow has not shifted the few songs that seem again to have stayed
November 9, 2025 at 8:56 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
today is a very special #smallpoemsunday because it’s my wife Kristi’s birthday! 🎈

Kristi isn’t on bsky yet but here’s a poem for her, from my book Reclaimed Water—feel free to share small poems you love (and/or wrote!), esp. love poems, and thanks for joining me in wishing Kristi a happy bday :) 🥳
Song of Restoration for Kristi In the chandelier hospital I’ve been sleeping on a little cot attending the mysteries of healing. You are still dazzling, but in fragments;— everywhere a hint of a whole. September is saying its long goodbye as ants march up the juice box. Most planets are probably so much quieter than ours. You are sleeping. I am looking at your face and seeing it as night’s greatest gift: the slack that with diamonds or glass throws light all over the room.
November 9, 2025 at 3:23 PM
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Joanne Kyger
* Saturday night Sometimes I think I can't make any mistakes *
November 9, 2025 at 12:15 AM