—
In the quiet water of subtidal habitats,
you have enough breathing room to misread
subtidal as suicidal, your brain predicting
what it sees now will be like
what you’ve been googling, low in your cove
of grayblue feeling. All the arts,
all of them, have led us to this ice. You
mix paints for the sea slush
and you’re out of green—you squeeze
the tube and it gives you nothing, the sides
touching through a thin layer
of dried paint, and instead of giving up
you leverage colorblindness as an asset
and mix in red instead, so the little
cove you’re painting starts to look like clay
so rich and malleable you could almost eat it.
—
Escape Rope
The truck’s mud flaps say STARGATE
& I’ve never felt closer to the earth, to the
Basic conceit of burial—i.e. if you go down
Far enough, if you live enough to have
Friends to bury you, then maybe when you get
Down there, after a little time has passed
The gates will open & there will be
Sandboxes full of stars for you to play with
You can make castles you can tear them down
You can shepherd the toy truck across
The bridge over the moat to safety
Its mud flaps still emblazoned
but faultlessly clean
—
Tom Snarsky teaches mathematics at Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts, USA.
