self-published, etc

rocks have the softest shadows, 237 pages
poems, Dec 2020

untouched in the capital of soon, 187 pages
poems, Sept 2021

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can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
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excerpts FROM [rocks have the softest shadows]



Lone high, Ohio:

stars, I guess

and a trapdoor
for a certain
kind
of turtle

and stars
for sure
...

Lying to the basilisk:


You spoke to me through an egg for so long that the back of my neck changed moons. If I think hard enough, I can still see your mother putting in her mouth the glove her god treated like a baby’s hand. I cook a mirror. I cook for an orphan made of sleep. Will our breath always be the bone that didn’t make it into the wing of thirst? If it’s a boy, pick for an alien a flower. Dogs forget their human year.
...

SWAN AND SWIM NAME EACH OTHER SWIM AND SWAN

Sadness never gets around to introducing its young.

Poverty
hates
magic.

Unless they die,
babies
make movies
longer.

Angel is what I call my plan
to catch a ghost.


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excerpts FROM [untouched in the capital of soon]



DOES ILLNESS KNOW THE WHOLE TIME 
WHAT IT'S LOSING

so obvious was paper cut’s love for scar

night
wouldn’t hurt
a shadow

...

NEXT NOTES

Saturday I wait to care for my still sleeping brother as a tennis ball sighs its dog back and forth on a television screen. Who can sleep, with all this care? Patience is a midwestern agony. It doesn’t last, but death can’t watch.

...

city 36

A running shower that prays impossibly on the body of our lowest sibling for the return of a bomb-maker's homesick drone


city 46

A paper airplane on fire in a helpless mirror


city 60

(how to starve a microscope in god's museum)


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