Two Poems

Tom Snarsky

The One and Final Pain Reliever

Board the raft and leave
the experiment. Tell no one
where you’re going. If

they ask, give them reason
to believe you’re seeing
a show on ice, the skaters

perfectly ept and the
concessions so comically
expensive you can’t afford

them now, not a single one.





Funny Zero

I became a standup comedian
who told no jokes, only stood up
on stage and was laughed at
continuously for hour-long sets
at a time. Then I’d go back
to my dressing room, count the
minutes until midnight when
we could celebrate the birth of
a new day, arrival in a new city
on my nonstop silent tour
of America, a flashlight with
dead batteries in my backpack
for years next to a book of
poems by Julian Talamantez
Brolaski. I’m gonna meet so
many new fire hydrants this year,
I told myself, back in those times
before I wrote my first joke
and ruined everything

Tom Snarsky is a special education math teacher at Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts, USA. He is the author of Threshold, a chapbook of poems from Another New Calligraphy, and Recent Starred Trash, a chapbook available from marlskarx press. He lives in Chelsea, MA with his wife Kristi and their two cats, Niles and Daphne.
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