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September 20, 2022 / barton smock

unkeepings

Search histories of the kidnapped as erased by the ghost of a wedding photographer. A toad and a train car turning away from god. Leaving's 

display 
kitchen. The last birthday marked for touch.
September 19, 2022 / barton smock

my cousin writes to me about snakes

there's no skin where my skin pretends to cry

September 19, 2022 / barton smock

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

September 18, 2022 / barton smock

installment 4 of Lou Poster’s ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ ( at Schuylkill Valley Journal )

Lou Poster's  'The Kindness of Strangers' is dense and gutting, and is at Schuylkill Valley Journal (svjlit.com) 

SVJ is doing a serialized release of the story, and the fourth installment is up today.

first installment

second installment

third installment

fourth installment

September 15, 2022 / barton smock

more and more poems about sleep

a cigarette burn and a bitemark fight over a tooth from the dryer

jesus
was just a kid
September 11, 2022 / barton smock

installment 3 of Lou Poster’s ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ (at Schuylkill Valley Journal)

Again, if you read to hear backward, or to set a trap for touch, you owe it to your present self to check out Lou Poster's first published work 'The Kindness of Strangers' at Schuylkill Valley Journal (svjlit.com) 

SVJ is doing a serialized release of the story, and the third installment is up today.


first installment

second installment

third installment

~

Lou Poster is a Native West Virginian, current resident of the poorest county in Ohio. Appalachian songwriter/singer/storyteller. Son of a third generation coal miner.


September 11, 2022 / barton smock

keepings

I fear sometimes that the world I've given my children is so small that their own children will need found by god. I don't have a cough but my cough has a ghost. Here I am breaking down a plastic spoon for a dollhouse bird. I'm close to telling my body what happened. People who can sleep are liars.
September 9, 2022 / barton smock

softspot

has footfall for moon

finger 
for the blue
car door

has brevity's 
darkroom

for triangles underwater

September 9, 2022 / barton smock

( well a sameness in the journal entry

2019, August

I like the present because now you can do everything tomorrow. also, this poetry thing, this doing of what I thought would populate community with...gathering? seeing and saying, all that. might be done? no one cares. unless you have the mouth they can match the teeth of it to the missing bitemark. but if you don't?  if your mouth is too widely opened? I thought visionary, mine, what is actually delusional. inclusive, theirs, what is actually coordinated. has coordinates. and unheralded lovely poets I love are sick and sad and old and too young and don't make the feed. and it's fine all of it and it happens unseen and is pearl and oyster and shadow's first bone. but I don't need to be here for it, right? some no one. offline. untrue of course. just midnight.

2022, Sept

so, yeah, nothing makes anything worth it, but, it almost does, sometimes, like, you can be broke and you can be lied to about your art and you can be asked to work yourself naked for those who burn their clothes and you can suddenly not be a good father for a few hours and it can wreck you, but, also...you can choose for a moment to not work on yourself and you can choose for a moment to let those around you be finished and it can be quiet and good and momentarily small and private enough to be safe. don't get me wrong it still sucks that we have to grab moments instead of holding the whole thing forever but. oh wait I'm wrong it's all terrible. backspace. delete.

September 8, 2022 / barton smock

it is dark in a bright language

Cornfield, christ, a clueless star. An orange toad setting fires in your father's younger stomach. 

I love not writing. There is a spot

you have
spaces