{italic / esque}

through March 1st, Lulu is offering 15% off all print books with coupon code of FEB15

my latest everything I touch remembers being my hand is here:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/everything-i-touch-remembers-being-my-hand/paperback/product-23527319.html

~

some recent poems:

[returning]

childish nicknames for the messiah

these desperate meditations
on the ghost
of a sober
twin

I am not death but enter
like it
the church
of so many
canceled
spelling bees
to ask
whose punishment

for being born
am I

~

[the angel]

the sea
its oldest
orphanage
the angel
of a butterfly
from hell’s
first council
of sleep
watches
as we kiss
on the hand
our hunger
ate

~

[safe musics]

the amnesia
of my jack-in-the-box
gave way
to boomerangs

and motion
was the capital
of grief

~

[access musics]

I have a friend whose father called every basement the devil’s treehouse. a friend who’s here today because she hid a knife. whose brother met god too early on the path to god and whose mother would jump from anything to fix a tooth…

there are people who don’t smoke
who want to

when it rains

~

[remote musics]

I write in this tongue and pray in another.

we sleep
and are kissed
by an ear
in three
beds: train, cow, frog.

if you’ve seen one roach,
you’ve seen them all. that’s where they come from.

~

[cord musics]

there is nothing for the brained cow. still,

you braid the sound of an eye
coming up for air.

hunger has one breast, is a doll
based on a painted toe. at the feast

of the sockless alien
are its babies foot and fall.

~

[span musics]

she joked
I remember
that the jelly
on her stomach
was the blood
of loneliness

and there he was
in all his
not yetness
the bent chuckle
of our boy

his brain, even then
thieving
the loss, his muscle, godsmoke-

he’s eight, now, and my palms
hum
if I hold him
too long
but clarity
is a weeping
spine, a deep

weapon

~

[untitled]

squeeze
my shoulder
I think
bird
then species
of bird
plural
of deer
and species
of god

~~~~~

also, please check out volume first and second of {isacoustic*}:

first-
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/isacoustic-volume-first/paperback/product-23484069.html

second-
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/isacoustic-volume-second/paperback/product-23543831.html