I only exist when you’re not thinking about me. If we don’t answer the phone, we’re not poor. Death is afraid of god. And god, of nostalgia. I faint in a gas station bathroom. You have that dream, that lake, a coin stuck in the ice. In the movie, an unnamed animal smells smoke. The movie can’t get past it. The children don’t get up.
people will say they'll say, but then won't. and I get it. time and finality and a thing done loses its unfinished allure. but I hold the following somewhere handless because it is that close. and I've said things about things and the people behind those things have kept silent. but this below keeps me above at times. Considering Ghost Arson as a collection, there are obsessions or at least repetitions: owls, milk, ghosts, etc. The pinnacle obsession being god in all forms and personalities (“you picture god as a toddler studying a map” or “the airway of a god with a tail”), the word itself repeated nearly to the point of semantic satiation, a term coined by Leon Jakobovits James, who also suggested that the phenomenon could be employed to ameliorate phobias. Consciously or not, perhaps Smock is attempting to exorcise a theophobia. Conversely, the recurrence could be a mantra reverberating across poems. – George Salis ~ some recent: RETURN CRY One hand broken, one hand dead. A ghost using a tooth as a bookmark. A bathtub owned by two dolls. I can’t keep coming back here to get younger. List, poem, paragraph. This whole year, neither bee nor jellyfish. I see my brothers. Rabbit miracles in the long past of god. RETURN ANIMAL Lightning paints nostalgia on a star. We say field in unison. Then grocery cart. Our fish-bitten father carries his fever into a photograph. We use language as movie extras too alone to be killed. The outhouse burns as a demon. Two sticks to its name. RETURN BONE Pregnancy puts a jump rope on the moon. You hold your baby over a dog until you don’t fall asleep. Paw five only works in the snow. RETURN BODY We are home when they turn off the water. Son slides a sock puppet down a naked window. Each of us becomes a sound afraid of a different footstep. The window falls asleep. The dying forget how to stare. RETURN ILLNESS My son doesn’t hear god but does a wall eating behind a wall. Book spines. Legless birds. We keep our guesses close to the stomach. A scarecrow turns to salt. Time exits pain to kill a fish. RETURN TOUCH Her poems about swimming are all in the same book. You look too long at the photo of a hand. The food is hot and it hurts to be naked.
Her poems about swimming are all in the same book. You look too long at the photo of a hand. The food is hot and it hurts to be naked.
My son doesn’t hear god but does a wall eating behind a wall. Book spines. Legless birds. We keep our guesses close to the stomach. A scarecrow turns to salt. Time exits pain to kill a fish.
We are home when they turn off the water. Son slides a sock puppet down a naked window. Each of us becomes a sound afraid of a different footstep. The window falls asleep. The dying forget how to stare.
Pregnancy puts a jump rope on the moon. You hold your baby over a dog until you don’t fall asleep. Paw five only works in the snow.
Lightning paints nostalgia on a star. We say field in unison. Then grocery cart. Our fish-bitten father carries his fever into a photograph. We use language as movie extras too alone to be killed. The outhouse burns as a demon. Two sticks to its name.
wtf hey 2011
Barton Smock lives in Columbus, Ohio, with a wife who is her own and their four children whom are not property. He has recently self published, by both angel and demon, a book of poems ‘the paper dolls have been cutting your hair’.
signage
I was limping the edge of the pond so as to confirm in the world my clearance given to me as before by frogs. my punched nose was warm and my grief melted from it and I cupped my hands together for the blood and what mixed with it and when the cup was full I halved it and my already thick shoelaces thickened. soon into this drama one frog jumped from the pond and I was startled. startled too that indeed it was no frog but a toad or some form of toad. I followed it woozily from my father’s land onto the land of…
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One hand broken, one hand dead. A ghost using a tooth as a bookmark. A bathtub owned by two dolls. I can’t keep coming back here to get younger. List, poem, paragraph. This whole year, neither bee nor jellyfish. I see my brothers. Rabbit miracles in the long past of god.
ocean I die in a wave as a thought in a horse sleep is the itch death has for god her bird watcher skin
