from ‘deer as permission to die in Ohio’ (self published April 2023)

From deer as permission to die in Ohio (self published April 2023):


AGAINST INTERIORITY

The astronaut called to recut porn and the caterpillar to soften the palms of the crucified. The pill living in the pill you take. Toy noise from a phoneless hell. Blue doll, erasable wrist.


THE BULLET GOES THROUGH MORE PEOPLE THAN BEFORE

Cannibal on the 
moon, ghost at the piano.
The rain gone missing.


BREATHING MACHINES MADE IN OHIO

Unending angel 
of a terrified stomach.
Tadpole, eye’s daydream.


SMALL POEMS AGAINST DYING

The sleepwalker and the insomniac asking god to switch their hidden pregnancies.

A vaccine for object permanence.

The fly 
my ghost 
calls rain.


SMALL POEMS AGAINST DYING

Nude I carry my untouched handprint into the past disappearance of a photographed leaf. Pain and sickness lose each their memory but lose god’s first. It’s dark in the dark. Lift a spider’s broken finger.


SMALL POEMS AGAINST DYING

Erasing the scarecrow’s ankle with a cigarette.

Cutting the hair of the crucified.

Stars
and jobs
and stars.


AGAINST POEMS

Flashlight tag in a church. I sat in a back pew and kicked touchingly at a form I was sure belonged to my brother. Brother stayed quiet and put. I kicked him twice more, harder, trying to find a rib. Nothing. Came that little moon. Came that egg from paper fog. Time was ending. Our youth counselor limped out of somewhere, rubbing her elbows, testing an eye. Brother said where his body was. I felt left.


AGAINST POEMS

God forgets things before they happen. In third or fourth grade, I was pulled out of a bathroom stall by a boy who’d been nice to my mother and I was told what should or should not be in my stomach. There was another boy with him. A city named Empty and a city named Goldfish took turns burning. I missed the future. The past, more.


~~~~~


deer as permission to die in ohio, 43 poems
chapbook, April 2023
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
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