by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

When I try my best not to say “fuck” as in 
it was so fucking adorable when David  
used to belt out James Taylor’s  
“Shed a Little Light” standing on top  
of the coffee table in the living room,  
singing into a wooden spoon  
as if it were a microphone, 
his shirt off, his hair a mass of brown curls.  

When I try to act my age,  
even though I am wearing  
a jean jacket and everyone  
else looks a little nicer.  

How two families join each other  
when a wedding is about to happen  
and you all try to be on your best behavior.  

How maybe I want to get the award  
for the best mother-in-law from the woman  
my son is about to marry by making her breakfast 
and giving her a necklace I hope she loves.  

How she looks at him and he, her. 
How it feels a little like a handoff, 
not that I am going anywhere, 
at least I fucking hope not.

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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. Poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Recent work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. See sarahdickensonsnyder.com.

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

Rise before the sun,
help it over the horizon,
sit in a silent room,
walk on the rain,
sliver the day
into breaths,
& swallow
desire.

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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

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

Lately I've been watching
the birds, the way the juncos
seem to know my home,
every stretch of the deck
railing they claim, the way they turn
toward me at the kitchen window
or are they trying to see
themselves?

Look, three sparrows
on the sagging wet wire of patio lights,
how they sway and hold on
to such a narrow perch.

They welcome the weight
of water. They have
their own atmosphere,
their own moon.

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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, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. She has been a 30/30 poet for Tupelo Press, nominated for Best of the Net, the Poetry Prize Winner of Art on the Trails 2020, and a 2021 Finalist and Semi-Finalist in the Iron Horse Literary Review’s National Poetry Month contest. She lives in the hills of Vermont.

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

How shocked I was
as a child to learn
that the architecture of life
included death—a frightened fire
starting inside of me fueled
by containment.

I have watched people die,
held their cool hands
as they exhale a last breath.

Each time is a lessening,
an echo—the way veins
of a fallen leaf are a faint imprint
of the tree or the inside whorl
of a shell holds onto the sea.

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Sarah Dickenson Snyder has written poetry since she knew there was a form of writing with conscious linebreaks. 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 have appeared in Artemis, The Sewanee Review, and RHINO.

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

You could also
believe that instead of the arc
bending toward justice, it falls into mud,
that there is no magnetic pull of goodness lingering
in the stars. How some of us will end in a nursing home,
alone, our minds washed of the stacks and stacks of scenes
we held in the folds. Or maybe there will be rebirth—
scientists have regenerated parts of dead pigs’
brains. I wonder what returns—The trough?
The suckling at a teat? The last touch
of dirt on those four tiny feet
before the slaughter?

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Sarah Dickenson Snyder has three poetry collections, The Human Contract, Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera, forthcoming in 2019. Recently, poems have appeared in Artemis, The Sewanee Review, and RHINO.