some old things rearranged and I know you’ve been here before but there is a work I did not create called the tornado that lost our emptiness

Eating is magic. Hunger a rabbit removed from its environment. I can make some sense now, I think, of death. Of a grandmother’s life of cooking and loss. We wore our frostbitten noses. Did things with frogs might an infant laugh on the inside where a nothing was still in boxes. Took from blood 

its blue 
now. 

Which was wrong. 

~ 

I want for my son a more regular sadness. Not touch with its vacant déjà vu. Not the stutter, untapped, of his far beast. More the fasting of an unknowable fish. A marionette 

gazing 
at a toy 
car 

~ 

Ohio moons: 

the child we could not bury and the child like it 

a ghost crying over the loss of a plain colored pet 

unmothered sisterlight 

the time between oranges

~ 

Moods for screenplay: 

It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 
It is always just before the sadness that I stop brushing my teeth 

Small again 
the star is little

~

AND

hard copies available, PAY WHAT YOU WANT:

untouched in the capital of soon, 187 pages
poems, Sept 2021
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock

blood to bathe us in its blue past, 217 pages
poems new and selected, May 2022
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock

and I say