{mourn. gain.}

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my newest thing, {L A I T Y}, is here:
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most of my work is self-published, and is here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad

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will send a free hard copy of any work to any person interested in reviewing. such a request can be made to: bartonsmock@yahoo.com

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I write often at https://kingsoftrain.wordpress.com/

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some poems:

[to angels on diving boards]

the chain-smoker’s
projected
backstroke

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[the quiet that comes after a two car accident on a country road]

could strangle
an owl
cast
perhaps
as a mole
listening
to the belly
of a stopped
deer

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[untitled]

I vandalize the outside of a church in a city designed by men with bad teeth and there I mistake a drop of blood for a penny and begin to last forever

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[atop]

I told everyone at school that my parents were together when they died and everyone at work that my children were not. I chewed my sister’s food because she feared the quiet. ate in two languages. I wanted my brother’s singing voice. his newborn to be shaped in the shadow of a pipe that went from cocoon to cornstalk. the sound of god hitting on a ghost.

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[stars from a glass eye]

its gaze
a eulogy
for distance
the animal
is mostly
pity

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[cocoon has its own name for suicide]

age I’m at
I go
from bath
to funeral
to bath-

puppet
that made
a fist