(____)

 

~

from
The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake / September 2013
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-blood-you-dont-see-is-fake/paperback/product-21966942.html

[ sleepy, tenable town ]

I put a make believe woman through hell.

I worship the devil.
I worship the devil because my dog drowns in a water bowl.

I pass the time writing holy, holy.

I condemn my body
as I need
proof.

I say to a particular no one a boy after my own heart.

I’m not sure what makes mother power off the television.
she moans afterward as if it is the great work of her neck.

I keep an appointment to be blinded by a window washer.

every other word of my father’s autobiography
is not so strange.

if I hadn’t pissed myself in second grade, Hector might have.
his brothers would’ve beaten him. his unborn sister
would’ve been premature
on purpose.

I can count on your hand the Hectors we know.

it could be that mother worries we are wildlife.
she wrote once

depression is a dog whistle. I missed dinner sounding it out.

between me and you, you’re the private
sort
of person
women
like.

[ chimera ]

to watch the fire I make my way to a hay bale.
a certain misshapen bale I first called

scarecrow’s womb
but now

jesus hill.

this is the kind of time I have.

–

my sister believes her left eye doesn’t exist.
that it is the shadow of her right.

because of her many beliefs,
my father has placed himself
inside
a pacing
man

where he curses like a censored linguist
made to collect
a tower’s
rubble.

–

in my dreams I am charged with a notch of black tape
and the sloth
agony
of a woman’s
nipple.

–

I pass a finished tree with some color left in its leaves
and recall my uncle swallowing his ribbons

from the heyday of flame
at the height of what mother called

intake

[ subterranean ]

three skinny kids, boy, boy, girl

beat on a fourth
and leave him
wheezing
in what they know better
than to call
but call anyway

forest. the beaten boy

swoons
into tree after tree
and loses
his memory.

he spends a few good hours trying to pin
the small shadows
of overhead birds
beneath his feet.

he thinks there might be a girl
watching him, that she might weaken
for one

who possesses
odd powers.

[ this that informs ]

I scratch the cheeks
of my sleeping
son.

both of my secrets
are hands.

my son has only one secret.

it curls his body
into a claw.

it caresses

the sibling world.

[ oracle ]

before he is out of the city, he takes a cheap umbrella from under the passenger seat and rolls down his window at a stop light. he motions to the fat woman he thinks only he can see. she is ugly in all kinds of weather and she is ugly now in the rain. though wide awake, the thought of her walking is an insomnia that torments him with the restless image of her walking. before he is out of the city, the woman catches up to him a total of three times.

–

over the course of a day, the perfect tongue god gave me might cross my mind once.

my son was put on this earth to worry about his baby brother

not being able
to do anything
about having an itch.

–

after knocking the girl from the bike
I stay in the car.

as for facts, she has six goddamn sisters and two middle fingers.

–

as for confession

I have a kind of claustrophobia
brought on by having a body.

[ distant sea cage ]

I am ruined. I am ruined because I cannot speak without moving your mouth. I am getting younger. if my mother dies, I’ll have nowhere to go. I wake up. in the morning, I have one finger and use it to light the rest. my muscles are whispers of a mass firing. my father throws a well dressed mannequin from the fourth floor and disappears. I wrestle it into the burning pile. meat is scarce. supplies a tiny church.

[ deserters ]

ice on a wrist
after scrubbing
whole sets
of knives

–

in the bed
of a truck
on a lawn
a throne

–

you were not
born today so stop
acting out

–

for a gun, unscrew the handle of a water hose.

for a rope, find a rope.

–

brothers sitting

back to back
in an outside
bath

–

no, no whisper
to speak of

they are far off

they curse

–

any foot
a dead bird

blue

–

think a finger
reviving
a finger

puppet

–

think hard
on nothing
on a farm
machine

[ the stripper ]

beauty is the beginning of beauty. a man and a woman wait together for a stripper. you know the man like an intimate thought. like a toddler covered head-to-toe in blue body paint stepping in front of a blue door. the woman is an unfinished stranger whose son comes home to be with war and whose husband rests until laziness subsides. the man is aware he’s the devil and this makes him god. the woman is unaware she’s the devil and this makes it easy. the stripper is watching a horror film and it makes her want to have a child. she decorates her home then tries to remember moving a muscle. the blood you don’t see is fake.

~

from
father, footrace, fistfight / June 2014
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/father-footrace-fistfight/paperback/product-21672373.html

[ bait ]

I didn’t see it
like some kids
saw it-

pain
as clay.

a swat here or there
to the back
of a mother’s
mind.

a man who took a bowling ball
into a closed garage
had no sadness
I could pray
over.

…Santa smoked on the roof
of my father’s house
while I
with a noiseless
stomach

touched
that hunger.

[ how to live in the country dark ]

toss frogs
into a fire
your father made.

find a woman
who’s abandoned herself
to being led
by a stick

let her blind mongrel
lick your palm.

bury a handful
of gravel
call it
the moon’s
grave.

hide in houses
hidden
from road.

make at least one friend
whose night vision
is a glass of milk.

double your body
by walking
drunk.

~

from
Eating the Animal Back to Life / July 2015
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/eating-the-animal-back-to-life/paperback/product-22277755.html

[ inocula ]

I put my sense
of taste
behind me
by placing
a sick child
beside one
sicker.

a crow is not a star.

loss
is the salt
of now.

[ inseparable ]

mother is watching a show that keeps her from picturing the gods who portray us. father is choosing an ice cube to bury. myself I am very close to stripping for the cigarette my sister rescued from a baby’s crayon box in a dream that smelled like her clothes.