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March 31, 2023 / barton smock

against poems

I would read 
frog
as wolf
wanting to see
words change
wanting
to name
the few
not the five 
thousand
murdered
thrice-heard 
boys 
who cried 
fly
March 31, 2023 / barton smock

our memories lose each other but that’s too soft

Three angels share a stomach. Our ears touch, a boat dies. A goodbye. Filmed by no one god knows. 
March 29, 2023 / barton smock

hourlong

A church left to a church 

A car on fire 
all the time 

The invisible hair 
of an owl, Fists 

made by the babies 
that breathing 
tried, How 

I am gone 
& there are people 
I forgot to love
March 27, 2023 / barton smock

small poems against dying

An impossible stone. And in the stone the middle sick child of noise. And in the child a clueless crow. Now strikes now. Pain only remembers tomorrow. 

I won't create god. He keeps asking. 

The extent of my knowing is that I know it is there, 
the thing my life interrupts.

She, her, field. Leaving 

on an Ohio
road

a mouse
to invent
ice.

The angels are fine. Miracles are terrifying.
March 23, 2023 / barton smock

against poems

I am in the way 
of way. Why would doom be fast? 
I sleep or love you
March 23, 2023 / barton smock

small poems against dying

The turn-takers god and sleep. 

Southern attempts 
at non
graphic 

violence. 

A mother’s pet wasp. 
A boy 
not able 

to overhear. 

Spider
spelling
psalm.

An allness.

Apple bones and future
lambs.
March 22, 2023 / barton smock

small poems against dying

Empty stomach, crow with a crushed heart. Owl, dark ambulance. This is in Ohio where an ear swam into my ear. Where god won’t visit pain and pain will a graveless cemetery in the field of my sex. I’ll love almost anything. Blank moment, distracted by the present. Our first past.
March 20, 2023 / barton smock

against poems

I put my father’s ear to a leaf. Listen for the salt in my mother’s knee. Place a handgun on the pillow that god rolled under. Leave with a dog that can’t hear thunder.
March 17, 2023 / barton smock

small poems against dying

I fear my body.
Shape sends flowers to a ghost.
They arrive, then don’t.
March 15, 2023 / barton smock

small poems against dying

the valley
of insect
the lost
plural
the funeral
we held
for a pill
the low
priest
of wrist pain
his bad
back
snow
snow