country 8 I made a list, once, of all the weapons I wanted you to try and then, while barefoot, I was told that god would never walk and that my birthmark was a hole I'd never see. Here are two poems about nostalgia: regret regrets not using its alias this is the wrong tadpole's past
country 7 Two mirrors praying over the glass in our food. Death continuing to believe I know where god is. The pill that remembers your one thought. The choir of alas
city 33 Bagging the bright mouse in the deer faith of my youth - city 34 Tooth decay carried by god over the capital of After - city 35 All secrecy genetic Proof is our last ghost - city 36 A running shower that prays impossibly on the body of our lowest sibling for the return of a bomb-maker's homesick drone - city 37 An angel burned for soundproofing crows - city 61 One dollhouse for another The noises leave I keep the same double life Dog's paw, child's knee The rifle's Tilted field - city 67 Dying, touch will ask to attend the hand's silent film debut - city 69 Crow, with seashell - city 70 or 71 The short past of my body in the small of yours A baby chewing on its hand in pile of leaves - city 72 and 73 The boy has one mouse All named Cigarette - city 74 In its shadow grief the window in the open Mirror - city 102 Angels buy footsteps with pictures of the poor - city 103 Your mother enters god in the ghost you painted for death
untouched in the capital of soon, 187 pages poems, Sept 2021 can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-1 or CashApp: $BartonSmock *pay what you want. if cover preference, let me know in order notes or at bartonsmock@yahoo.com on GUMROAD, here
country 6 Lightning as it thirsts for a stray glacier's rib. The unsought quiet of a surgeon's body. Things after they happen in the sun of my disgrief
country 5 A bunch of insomniacs are making short films about nosebleeds. To them I am sometimes a sound effect. Handstand or handsand, I am too young to be watched. I don't have wrists and I can't take the bath your body took. Kiss loss. Kiss loss where
Birth, our briefest talent, has come to switch the wrong bodies. Keep the world like a fish that hasn't surprised a bird. I have little, I have only. My secret death and its unled lord.
eyesight in the dream is a small cloth on a decent doll but the dress code isn't clear
country 1 Death is the only absence that absence honors. Not seeing creatures up close is home country 2 No one prayed here nor left here to pray. Hurry, math. The small gods they lower the footprint country 3 Blue from making thin air, we could almost see the snowball in your mother's stomach country 4 A tooth taken by a tooth. The night on one knee. A child as friendless as a wrist ~~~~~ ( response poems for Benjamin Niespodziany i. My sibling's white noise machine reminds angels that they've no young. There are three light switches per rooster. They are The overlooked church of the eel Frog's empty life God sees an image that's been moved by me ii. Everything being done is done outside of a horse Your mother's hearing loss keeps my voice from changing Lightning dreams itself into a cat thrown from a moving car A lit match enters a flashlight iii. dear Ohio the ocean is worried about a trapdoor also about the ocean I want you to think about the number of limbs remembered by a bitemark and then our little satan using the same bowl for his food that he does for his water iv. Body language being kept alive in a ghost town. Wind's missing child can't get sick. v. Loss sees its mother in its mother. Not all of us die. - In hell, one forgets hell's naked birds - Empty says it has a twin. Far says nothing.
After one death, there is another. Poetry is dead all the time. Is the orphan of our notified life. Rooted wildness, outlandish conformity. When my grandmother passed away, was poetry gave a future to any moment failed by my presence. When my youngest son was diagnosed with a rare progressive disorder of the muscles and the brain, was poetry offered its amnesia as the combination to its blank safe. Some would say our empty protest of verse lands us on the steps of nothing. Why, then, these steps? You can’t catch a fish with the shadow of a bird. But you tried, right? You tried in that poem your friend wrote, the one where a stone ate a star. And is maybe still eating. When my grandfather, my aunt, my father-in-law, my grandfather...ah. Hell if I know. A trace of deletion. An afterparty for the advertisers of illness. I used to smoke so I could stand over a thing that didn't have a ghost. If people knew about my teeth, I don't think they'd read my poems. Like you, I was tricked into being beautiful. There are line breaks in my prayer for scansion. I am saying this is holy. I am saying this is common. How many hearts does god have? Of how many does she lose track? I am poor from being poor and poetry is still dead. Unforgive me. partially before HERE
poverty a handprint starts in the shoulder of a ghost - I could not kill not after seeing the ice-covered red dog by the barn - not magic we call it god the waiting that god does
