It Starts With A Spider
No, it starts with my wife,
asking me to please remove
up there in the corner, by the door
 
It starts with a feeling.
For the spider, for my wife. The spider
I removed two days ago,
flushed (I’m so sorry)
 
all legs and pea (small, dried rumply-ready-to-plant pea) -size body
 
            and because it was late and I was in my robe and our
            bedroom is in the basement and I am no Jain practicing
            ahimsa I flushed the spider, legs and all, but,
 
two days later she asks again, points,
up there, in the same corner, legs and pea and
I’ll swear it’s the same one.
 
It’s in the same place. Same pea-size. This time I pull on my robe
and because I’m thinking of reincarnation and because I can’t
always tune out the feeling of being swirled myself
down and drowning, I
 
            (think what it feels like to be a fish hooked in the mouth
            and my wife says she thinks she can’t fish          anymore but still
            likes to eat them and could I always take out the hooks but
            that’s another story or maybe not as that fish that spider
            could be a bodhisattva trying to teach me)
 
tie my robe and cup the pea with legs into a pint mason jar and
carry it upstairs and out-
 
side and release him/her into the flower bed.
 
            it ends with a spider. Doesn’t it? Or it ends in bed not
            worried about things dropping down on silk lines. It ends
            dropping off to sleep. It ends in life and death and life.

This piece was previously published in Steve Tomasko's chapbook of poems, "and no spiders were harmed" (Red Bird Chapbooks).
Dancing on the Edge
It starts with a lump in the throat, 
a shiver in the legs. Your fingers fidget. 
You ask yourself, how did I get here?  
You find Zugunruhe, a German word 
whose glottal voice holds the restlessness 
that shakes the feathers, trembles the legs of birds 
before migration. It’s a kind of genetic jiggle--
an edginess that tells the bird go go go. 

My older brother swings to the mambo, 
the samba, the merengue. He’s always boogied 
to socialist politics. He didn’t always dance. 
He chanced upon his passion as a way to heal 
his back. As a way to deal with cancer.
A better spine, a better world, some peace
of mind. A craving is a craving for. 

My brother once danced 62 nights in a row.
Medication made him sensitive to sunlight. 
After being inside all day he had to move 
move move. I like his focus, his dogged 
desire to live his passions. But I’m a generalist, 
a coyote, a crow—a nip here, a dip there, 
interests spread broad and thin. 

It’s inevitable, he says; there will be a more just 
and equitable world. We’re on the edge. Poised, 
quivering, dancing on the verge of something. 
Like the girl in a wheelchair he saw on a walking 
path in the Oakland Hills. She wanted to cross a bridge
but her parents said no. The approach was steep,
rough, dangerous. No they shouted, 
as she yeeehaaaah-ed down the gravel.
Insects seem to creep their way into Steve Tomasko’s poems (even his love poems). He doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. His wife, Jeanie, long ago stopped screaming when a dragonfly lands on her. She doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. But they both still get creeped out by spiders. Steve and Jeanie edited the 2015 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. Steve has had poems published in various journals including: The Aurorean, Concis, Corvus, Echoes, The Fiddlehead, Gnarled Oak, Hummingbird, The Madison Review, Right Hand Pointing, and Verse Wisconsin. He’s also been rejected by some of the best journals around.
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