(poems from) – eating the animal back to life – (July 2015)

poems from eating the animal back to life (July 2015, 316 pages, 10.00)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/eating-the-animal-back-to-life/paperback/product-22277755.html

horseface

you strike me as an invasive listener. I love your body. loving mine doesn’t mean I’m not okay wearing too many clothes. does this make me look alone? like, crucifix-on-the-dashboard alone? my mother fell for my father because he couldn’t find a finger to write with. horror movies lift me from poverty into a long period of healing followed by a jump scare. earlier, before you bled into a corncob, my brain had you as a spider spinning an infant. if it pleases god, I’d like to go somewhere time hasn’t been.

energies

my father snaps his shovel stealing snow from our travel-addicted neighbor. his mute sister’s last confession is a first. his doctor brother’s dollhouse is a hospital. television is a byproduct of my mother’s human longing for animals. if my arms were healed, I’d keep the baby from swatting its penis. I call my next trick rabbit sorrow.

the butcher

most babies here are born without a trigger finger.

but some
get through.

themes for arrowhead

if the damn thing is a boy, let it have a knot in its stomach. if it’s not one twin, it’s another. if a girl, find a woman who’s been to nothing and back.

bring me a fat tick from the dog of baptism. owl from the hair of god.

grooming

when her mouth arrives, it arrives in pain. what gets around to my brother is that after her fire was dipped in hell she tried to drown her trigger finger. I make a mental list of the oddest things that stick to my body. my hands come from two camps of how to count the devil’s teeth. food is the voice of god but it goes right through me.

accession

starvation
is the invisible
cannibal’s
birthmark.

water
is nothing’s
blood.