Jay Snodgrass


Hello Dark One

Under intense interrogation,
the diagonal line of my childhood

became unmoored
as a source of light, as a source

of making good on future constructions,

and the short colors, molecule dreams
became the other sources for

green and purple shadow, ultraviolet
pressed away by my inner light, frightened of evil.

And the bomb inside me, fondled
by such strict panic, enlarged.


Sign the book of Red

I’m a pork diner and a mistaken police beating.
Thank god I caught the regurgitation on tape
or doom would have befallen the street scene,

her testicles of yellow lamp light on the crimes.
My hands are bound to the rail tickets I carry,
and, look again, now they are just bloody stumps

backlit by sparks from the train pulling in
to the station. Or look now, they are investment
stubs gummy with my drying blood.

Remember everyone, save your ticket-ends
for the raffle, all proceeds go in to the vat to be
mixed up and re-fed to the dinner guests.

Remember to have your identification cards out
if you want to get your meal, open up, slide the card
down the row housing, down her mouth.



Jay Snodgrass has poems in Versal, Big Bridge, Oranges and Sardines, The Iowa Review, and so on. He lives in Florida, works in Georgia. A little like Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit.

 
 
 
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