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Poetry by JC Snyder

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  • smoke break

    standing alone
    outside the office
    smoke lingers from
    previous breaks
    head leaned back
    to the sun and
    across the way
    someone is sailing

    June 12, 2010

  • A Book to Read While Looking for Work (featured essay)

    Check out my new essay on E. B. White and my own unemployment journey – featured on Better Living Through Beowulf:

    A Book to Read
    http://www.betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/?p=4279

    June 10, 2010

  • these boys in my head

    these boys in my head
    vying for attention
    fighting
    and pulling me
    this way and that

    these boys,
    one (maybe more than)
    who was meant to be
    one who was
    for the time being
    one who
    knew all along
    and one…

    June 10, 2010

  • Wide Rivers

    From my great-grandmother’s book of poetry, Where Children Live (1958)

    Wide Rivers

    A small boy has no use for gentle rains —
    He watches with a weathered eye and mutters
    For rains that come in torrents, flood the mains,
    Overflowing streets and leaf-strewn gutters.

    He sees wide rivers, far as eye can measure,
    And, in storm-tossed debris, boats filled with treasure.

    June 9, 2010

  • lightning in the distance

    and so it ends
    lightning in the distance

    we all have brief moments of
    white hot
    sand into glass
    prism light – these choices

    we all are in danger
    of ending a
    flicker in a sky
    between clouds shyly
    aware that some
    won’t ever hear us
    thundering.

    June 8, 2010

  • bar regular

    the woman with silk black hair
    changed her name to fit in —
    i know nothing else other than
    she holds her wine close like
    smooth red silk
    and drinking slowly,
    promises she now fits in.

    June 6, 2010

  • poetry takes her leave

    poetry stalks leggy
    head up, blushing,
    turns around and slams the door–
    “we” laughed for hours
    at the haughty exit scene.

    June 5, 2010

  • my first sight of Alaska

    glimpes of streams
    and teases of
    jagged peaks behind
    scarves – lace silk –
    clouds, some
    more like a corset.

    the road curves ahead…

    on either side
    obscured mountain impressions
    spruce – dark green tall thin –
    and rain.

    [written in 2003 within a sketch that i can’t reproduce here…]

    June 5, 2010

  • we are vampires

    I drain your thoughts away,
    and then there are the glances and that subtle
    flutter when you approach.

    We crawl the night thirsty.

    Desire between the damned is
    my need to hurt you,
    bite scratch claw you bloody.
    And your need to lash out
    those few nihilistic times we speak.

    We know nothing of the other beyond these walls.

    But then
    in the haze of smoke that hangs down from the ceiling
    like electrical wires
    and loose panels under construction,
    in the only light of green beer bottles and neon signs,
    and empty sticky shot cups,
    and those not amused by life anymore,
    and the ragged dying breath of slow drunken dances,
    and good girls sliding down poles,
    and bad girls hiding in the bathroom,
    and big muscled men and shaved heads singing Godsmack,
    in the last hour,

    When our eyes have adjusted,
    you kiss me goodbye.

    Panic before the world turns bright.
    The frantic cramping fear that we have wasted it all.

    We are thirsty gluttons for punishment.

    June 5, 2010

  • wearing black

    the day I decide
    to dress
    all black
    head to toe black
    one gold necklace hanging
    bright

    is the day that I watch
    (beer in hand)
    a group of people carrying
    a cross
    chanting “God is great”
    chanting, marching
    and these people
    go on and on and on–
    they span blocks

    I stare from the doorway
    a black silhouette and
    my black cat
    listlessly watches through
    her small window.

    June 4, 2010

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