(to, from)

[dyad]

the homeless woman pokes my belly and says in all creation I’ve got no middle. says she catches herself sometimes pretending to be homeless. says we ought to stone god. says we do with prayer. says the first spider she talked to could speak but didn’t. says she has the two jobs my dad’s between. says she can hear mom or mama in the radio of my brokenness. says angels can’t go mad, can’t parallel park, can’t feign surprise. says she eats with her ears. says she can stop anytime. says I’m someone’s sugarbones. says sound is what god knocks over looking for his mouth. says it could speak its name and it wasn’t spider. says to hell with speech though it be our singing’s salt.

[the visits]

the sex machine has begun to breathe on her own. father sucks a brown bruise into mother’s half of my cigarette. I could be doing a handstand in a prison yard or watching as my cell is turned upside down. brother uncurls a finger from his made fist so deliberately I know he means it to be a hard-on. I crush my eyes with my eyes and try to remember the name my son gave to the loose tooth we hung together from a doorknob. was my son told me the puppets need our hair.

[in Ohio, when mortal]

my brother
jokes
in the barn
about suicide.

the fuck
would eat snow
if it came
from a cow.

I ask him
does he think
mom will miss
two cigarettes.

she’ll miss one, miss yours.

I am half his keeper.

[themes for moon]

dad says we live on a rock from god’s garden of near death experiences.

says throw a fucking baseball.

–

I could not see through my father
so I put my hand there
and it became a baby
with all its fingers

–

I was not raised by scarecrows.

had a toy that answered to wolves.

from [Eating the Animal Back to Life]- poems, Barton Smock, July 2015

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