FICTION

Tom Snarsky

When the line of waking
and the line of dreaming seem
to be drawing nearer to one

another, when two
people you talk to
on the same day hold opposite

opinions about mice
vs. rats—rats are nicer,
mice are at least small—it

starts to feel like it all
could be taking place
on a beach, channels

forming from the action
of waves over the sand,
not burrows of anything

living like you
thought when you
were a child. Although 

like any fact you could leave
with that and then be
surprised by ghost crabs

who do burrow,
scavenging at night
for food. Ghost shrimp too

dig down about four feet
into the sand, pulling
in ocean water to sieve

for plankton.
There’s a redundant
arrow in your drawing of

the pump: you have two
coming up, out, & back again,
signifying a return

of the same water
to the source that just tried
to expel it. Erase one,

maybe,
or adjust the end
so it points

to the next life

drinking the expired milk of fashion

my brain is the least sharp

it’s ever been, looking at the moon

like I’m waiting for instructions

Rat Control in Alberta

up & grinding
the stars’ bones

metronomes
right twice

then burned.
I learned doves

pollinate, eating
seeds and

fruits, proof
even peace can

be of use.
The truth

puts up
its hair, its

hackles
its best

defense
I hold a name

for it in my
broken

teeth,
oscillator knob

in one hand
sun dust

crawling out
the other fist

Live Electronics

Best If Used By

In Star Tannery, hastening
along the path to a paper
workless death, trying to

remind myself that small
acts of willing can save you
from lots of suffering, later, before

it’s all voided by the heat equation god
fed himself in his modest bachelor
quarters, & is eating still, dad

to bad things equally
Getting a little sycophantic
with my cat, bubbles

in the coffee I poured back
in the carafe to keep warm
You could call it heat, that missile

from a fast-encroaching future
There’s a school would call it need
but it hasn’t proved needful

of much,
our continuous
inaction

plenty so far
My car’s AC is broken and it will cost
$______________ to fix

the value of the car is
$____
summer grasses browning

like the poets who
nineteenth centuried me
for a while

meat sack moving
toward math
& mist