{pictures of god don’t sell / surprise for me a crow}

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[pictures of god don’t sell]
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/pictures-of-god-dont-sell/paperback/product-22977531.html

[surprise for me a crow]
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/surprise-for-me-a-crow/paperback/product-23034353.html

~

poems from {pictures of god don’t sell}:

[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.

~

[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.

~

[race]

poverty, father, mother:

/ someone
at this table
has nothing
to hide

/ touching
a UFO
can cure
frostbite

/ open the stomach of the winning monster

~

[attic radio]

the fattest baby in the nursing home can’t chew with its eyes open.

it’s a slow day.

looking into the future
a skeleton’s
dog
sees only
sticks.

lightning
marks
the robot’s
church.

~

[white mother]

the holder
of stomachs

licking
clean
the doll
of a depressed
ventriloquist

~

[nebula]

sister has her tail

brother
his paints…

satan’s baby can clap underwater

~

poems from {surprise for me a crow}:

[bring spoon]

dream won’t have me

kid says
they eat
hypnosis
the extras

of silent
film

~

[bring roach]

how long might satellites mourn? sickness took the lord. a scarecrow the pulse of a cricket.

not every image was worth the effort.

~

[zoo notes]

under hypnosis the boy becomes nostalgic for its opposite. we are having for the hole in your brother a funeral. at sea the haunted cage. in a fish the robot’s rib.

~

[void notes]

/ is here that our dreams of incarceration begin to overlap

~

[their language]

clown fog, road head, gas mask

–

I can work
with anyone

–

two boats
per animal, horror

–

is dead
but had

a farm

~

[country more]

as if night
knows when
to sleep