Shaming Crests by Tom Snarsky

Issue 1

A confused chatter:
in a way that spoke to the question, “Who am I?”,
the bricks got repointed and browner. Now, and then
not always evenly or easily, it is a double crisis,
pleasure we cannot and will not escape. There’s also room for
more problems on me than usual. Somebody who’s a piece
could write it and could also write about it, the moment years ago,
the medium of mastery.

There was a lot of language and confusion.
Then it is that kind of purring occurs,
both ways of splitting – reconciling personal desires
with the stranger’s steed (it gets to be so exciting but so big too).
The (oftentimes painful) gap between
sitting back and doing something quiet (it hurts)
and pasting a tree to the far left of the page
may be unaware of having lost it. We have changed,
size or some parts neglected or omitted,
only it was dark and no one could see.

Source Text: This poem is a cento with lines from the books Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds by Wendy Luttrell and A Wave by John Ashbery.

Tom Snarsky is a Noyce Teaching Fellow at Tufts University, MA. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Unbroken, Maudlin House, After the Pause, Shadowtrain, and elsewhere. He lives in Braintree, MA.