Tom Snarsky

Sonatina With A Theme From “Conjugal Burns” 

Eight hours of sleep later and I'm still a bag of crucial nonsense in
an airport terminal waiting to be rescued from nothing in particular by
the love of my life who's directing this film and taking it toward an
antipastoral idiom like in Twin Peaks or Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri
both of which I hope to write an essay on soon it
will probably be less about love and more about violence but then
you never know with half-baked essay ideas where they'll really go 
 
Ashbery said “It's fine, in summer, to visit the seashore.” but really
he probably only said that after he wrote it and he may not have even
written exactly that since I'm quoting “My Philosophy of Life” from
memory (even the title) which is always a risky business if it's been a
while since you and the poem have breathed each other (and it has)
though I insist on this approach because I refuse to work to make
this happen I trust my gut I write with my unvarnished stupid head 
 
on Nightmare Mode and I fire my unlimited ammunition into the
air because while playing the game I pressed L + R + Down, L + 
C-Left, L + C-Right, L + R + C-Left, L + Down, L + C-Down, R + 
C-Left, L + R + C-Right, R + Up, L + C-Left to get all guns and 
then I pressed L + R + C-Right, R + Up, R + Down, R + Down, L + 
R + C-Right, L + R + Left, R + Down, R + Up, L + R + C-Right, R + 
Left to get maximum ammo so now all kinds of rounds are flying 
 
into the pixelated sky and I'm still in America so there'll be no con-
sequences for either the waste or the dangerous falling debris we 
endure daily like death on the periphery or the recorded voice of

a loved one who died that you keep on your voicemail box for the

odd day when you need to hear it twice in your car before you get

out and get on with the day though probably it's night by then you've
had the day it tired you out and now there is only the promise of sleep


Massachusetts, USA. He is the author of Threshold, a chapbook of poems available from Another New Calligraphy. He lives in Chelsea, MA with his wife Kristi and their two cats, Niles and Daphne.