Tag: Sarah Dickenson Snyder

Two Poems by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

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THE VOLTA
There I was
making a basket
with the hem
of my T-shirt pulled up
to carry the fallen apples.
& then
a distance
shortened.
I’ll tell you what
I don’t remember—
something fell
out of me
when I found out
we all leave.
What was carefree
dropped its shiny seeds
into the sad
of not-forever.
A loneliness,
this anguish—
like moving through
a wideness of air
wingless.
*
DECEMBER 13TH
Taylor Swift & I have the same
birthday. Everyone loves her,
her lyrics so specific: the red scarf
she left in her ex-boyfriend’s sister’s drawer,
her pain finding a page & lifting into a song
to fill a car, like a murmuration of memories
whose underwings catch the sun & so the sky
glistens with them, feathered & swelled over the bridge
as I wait for the light to change. Now that I’m retired
I slow down at yellow lights, have time to wait, I might
see a bald eagle or find the perfect prime number
on a license plate, time to look for saints & think
about the close-to-gone, the snow’s forgiveness
or string theory—there might be even smaller particles
than the electrons we cannot see, tiny strings to name
inside the tiniest thing—a raw almost-nothing vibrating.
                                   Sometimes I think I feel it or hear it.
The way when I was five, I sat with Mrs. Stewart
at her desk during nap time because I couldn’t sleep,
the two of us in a dimmed, breathing room,
a green gooseneck lamp arced between us,
our pencils making marks, a small sound
of lines & curves unearthing. Her face
bent down, the pillow of breasts
in a flowered dress. That infinitesimal
vibration between us, between the page
& me, between a gliding eagle & me,
between the falling snow & me,
between Taylor’s voice & me
in this car on this Earth,
everything a part
of every string.
*
Sarah Dickenson Snyder carves in stone & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has four poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2023). Poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Work is in Rattle, Verse Daily, and RHINO. sarahdickensonsnyder.com

OUR HOLY SYMBOLS NEED ATTENTION by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

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OUR HOLY SYMBOLS NEED ATTENTION

As a child I was horrified when I walked into church
and saw a poor man hanging from a cross, those drips

of blood caught in time at the center of his palms,
nails through them and his crossed ankles, his head bent

in death. A murder scene at the end of a red-carpeted aisle.
Then onto the bread I watched people eat that I could not have.

A piece of his body. And the tray of money, something else
I could not have as it passed by. Too much to store in a brain

stacking itself with fears. Those pipes blaring a hymn,
my mother’s voice otherworldly as she stood next to me.

*

Sarah Dickenson Snyder lives in Vermont, carves in stone, & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has three poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera (2019) with another book forthcoming in 2023. Recent work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. sarahdickensonsnyder.com

Night Work by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

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Night Work

In the lucid hours of insomnia
I build and multiply images—
a whole wall of unsleeping,

feel the stillness
of my husband’s body
against my unspooling.

I lift the necklace of marigolds,
a gift in Rishikesh, almost inhale
the-more-dirt-than-flower scent.

Now I’m on our road at dusk
in that echo of one gunshot.
It’s hunting season, everyone

wearing red or orange.
Where did that bullet land,
did it sink in living skin?

I am on a mission
to dig and dig
until the clink of bone,

and I find the rhyme
in love and blood.

*

Sarah Dickenson Snyder has written poetry since she knew there was a form with conscious line breaks. She has three poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera (2019). Recently, poems appeared in Rattle, The Sewanee Review, and RHINO. She has been a 30/30 poet for Tupelo Press, nominated for Best of Net, the Poetry Prize Winner of Art on the Trails 2020, and a Finalist for Iron Horse National Poetry Month Award. She lives in the hills of Vermont. sarahdickensonsnyder.com