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I.

BLUE MIND (parts, etc.)

~

I miss
learning
of you

does art
lose everything
made visible

by grief

~

when little
of one is left
one
is born

my son’s
look
is not
far off

(fish
they struggle
in the water’s
hair

~

between hearing thunder and seeing deer, the dying woman tells a story in a language she’s never spoken. I swear to use smaller words. ill, far. farm. in each of us, perhaps, is the lost faith of god. the bread of our anthill’s home.

~

hungry for kindness, each of us pretends to see the other’s hallucinations. I admire the backstroke of your perfect scarecrow and you the focus of my choking owl. when we see the same thing, be it mouse or frog, we chew to keep our hearing in place. to have you as a brother is to be alone. our father makes robots for our mother to mourn while our sister opens an eye in the blindfold’s mouth. rocks have the softest shadows. before I saw god, I saw god’s ear.

~

a toy, brief and doomed. cat sadness. oh there are days the kids say nothing beautiful. soon is a painting but when. of a ballerina leaving Ohio for a gas can. of god giving death

a blank puzzle. of how to dress if I’m ugly.

~

we had beautiful conversations but the earth was dying.

you remember god and I

god wanting
a child.

mother with her skin condition was at the chalkboard.
so alone / as to be / inherited

(we thought
in poems…

a doll
we said
a doll

pretending to miss its empty
bar
of soap. (I was

unpray
to your

longlessness. art was the clock of the poor.

~

I lost my voice believing in ghosts and before that

spoonfed my brother until he tied me to a chair. this was the beginning of wanting my kids to play dead in front of the nothing my eyes could do. one sockless and one sick. not forever.

~

we’re drunk in the backyard with my body and your grief and you say you’re hungry and this is how I end up holding a plate in the bathroom mirror where once my mother ate so quickly that a baby remembered its face

~

II.

RECENT THINGS

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interview:
http://flywayjournal.org/book-reviews/interview-with-barton-smock-author-of-ghost-arson/

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day:
http://mysmallpresswritingday.blogspot.com/2019/02/barton-smock-my-small-press-writing-day.html

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reflections:

on Ceremony of Sand by Rodney Gomez:
Ceremony of Sand ~ poems ~ Rodney Gomez

on Stay by Tanya Olson:
Stay ~ poems ~ Tanya Olson

on The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded by Molly McCully Brown:
The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded ~ poems ~ Molly McCully Brown

on I’ll Build Us A Home by Emily Paige Wilson:
I’ll Build Us a Home – poems – Emily Paige Wilson

on Lethal Theater by Susannah Nevison:
Lethal Theater – poems – Susannah Nevison

on Descansos by Katherine Osborne:
Descansos – poems – Katherine Osborne

on Mannequin in the Nude by Logan February:
MANNEQUIN IN THE NUDE, a poetry collection by Logan February, reviewed by Barton Smock

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