{targeted}

poems from my most recent self-published collection {name calling}:

~

[boy with bible]

scissor his hair
with fingers
from the hand
of your longer
arm

picture him
as a hardscrabble
mystic

gay

/ the frog shepherd

~

[entries for loss]

can we stop this talk of the baby cut in half and ask why this town has two graveyards. show me a dog showing an angel where to dig. the brothers have all gone underwater to raise money for hand signals and the sisters have taken from a tale of snowfall an orgasm to amnesia’s headstone. the parts of the movie you look at

vanish. it’s my fault there’s a god.

~

[entries for yield]

in laundromat
my stomach
moves
my bed

my blood wears a blue sock

and a fly goes down on melancholy’s crossword

my sister is here to have gum in her hair
and hair
in her mouth

tooth is the ghost beak is not

mom makes us wear most of it home

the animal’s first time as something else

~

[entries for transformation]

i.

is there blood in something born outside,

a history that works in one ear?

ii.

time touches nothing. is the sex of my bruise

/ a scar

~

[entries for water]

seasons by the look and smell of him being beaten.

a hole in a fingerprint. doll overboard.

~

[a letter, silent]

a letter, silent

dropped by a word
into window’s
bible

–

cot, diving board, empty pool. southernmost

search

for earpiece.

–

medusa

her headless
horseman

/

note:

25% off today on all print books at Lulu with coupon code of LULU25

{name calling} is here:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/name-calling/paperback/product-23117082.html