I have all the words that have gone missing to say that I am thankful for being in the August 2021 run of Poem-A-Day at poets.org as guest edited by Kazim Ali Read my poem here about the poem: “I can't speak for all fathers, but my own fathering is littered with necessary and fake finalities. As such, I wrote this poem by hand on a small piece of paper while worrying about the long and short lives of my children. In the spacing of the poem, I tried to honor the little room I'd given myself for its projected concerns.” —Barton Smock
I am in the way of way. Why would doom be fast? I sleep or love you
The turn-takers god and sleep. Southern attempts at non graphic violence. A mother’s pet wasp. A boy not able to overhear. Spider spelling psalm. An allness. Apple bones and future lambs.
Empty stomach, crow with a crushed heart. Owl, dark ambulance. This is in Ohio where an ear swam into my ear. Where god won’t visit pain and pain will a graveless cemetery in the field of my sex. I’ll love almost anything. Blank moment, distracted by the present. Our first past.
I put my father’s ear to a leaf. Listen for the salt in my mother’s knee. Place a handgun on the pillow that god rolled under. Leave with a dog that can’t hear thunder.
I fear my body. Shape sends flowers to a ghost. They arrive, then don’t.
the valley of insect the lost plural the funeral we held for a pill the low priest of wrist pain his bad back snow snow
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God forgets things before they happen. In third or fourth grade, I was pulled out of a bathroom stall by a boy who’d been nice to my mother and I was told what should or should not be in my stomach. There was another boy with him. A city named Empty and a city named Goldfish took turns burning. I missed the future. The past, more.
Flashlight tag in a church. I sat in a back pew and kicked touchingly at a form I was sure belonged to my brother. Brother stayed quiet and put. I kicked him twice more, harder, trying to find a rib. Nothing. Came that little moon. Came that egg from paper fog. Time was ending. Our youth counselor limped out of somewhere, rubbing her elbows, testing an eye. Brother said where his body was. I felt left.