soft-focus slaughterhouse
poems, Dylan Krieger
11:11 Press, 2021
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With a punk patience for the previously prophetic, poet Dylan Krieger, in soft-focus slaughterhouse, predicts with the grey comedy of deep presence what pain is losing to our collectively photographic memory of being invasively untouched. This is a verse the closes distance with the body actual, a verse that does not suffer suffering, a verse somewhat for the uncrucified astronaut indebted to imagery but really and wholly for those who can remain nostalgic for prognosis while knowing how sick it is to leave one’s affliction to another. This is a poetry of essential saying, of wordplay and wordwork, and language needs to catch up.
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reflection by Barton Smock
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book is here
city 31 Click while naked On this link That later the forgetting is small
city 30 God didn't think we'd create sleep
Danny Madden’s Beast Beast is a film of spaces both dedicated and random, and of a time not sure if it’s escaping or being told to leave. Its DIY beginnings resist plot but then succumb, and if its more local parts seem an ill fit for the smallness of its universal body, it does well in the wounds of opera as it interrogates exhibition with display and asks performance whether the lines have been said wrong or were they just given to the wrong person. While Will Madden gives his character just enough nothing to own, Shirley Chen and Jose Angeles come separately from another movie that becomes this movie and they take root in that brief claim. Psychologically patient, Kourosh Ahari’s The Night is a knockout of a horror film that follows a couple and their child long enough that something behind us begins to live with the guilt of being temporary. With the dual portals of imagery and language, the performances by Shahab Hosseini and Niousha Jafarian go from ghost to ghost, barrier to obstacle, knowing that a shallow grave is deeper than a jump scare and that one eye is never surprised there’s a second.
city 27 Here you will sleep like a gun on its dying password * city 28 Touch is everywhere a stranded know-it-all * city 29 What's the longest we've gone being pictured by nothing
city 24 An angel moving itself in the mouth of a ghost while on the back of a sea turtle * city 25 Pain as proof the sun is small * city 26 A boat that has two gods
city 23 I can almost not hear a toothache tell a truck driver that squirrels get that way praying over roadkill
Monster thanks to DC Wojciech and Anvil Tongue Books for running this excerpt from my privately self published bookrocks have the softest shadows. It is always the eyes that surprise my sight. * book info is here: rocks have the softest shadows poems Barton Smock 237 pages Dec 2020 ~ CONTENTS pages 1 through 41, DIETS OF THE RESURRECTED pages 43 through 80, from AN OLD IDEA ONE HAD OF STARS pages 81 through 167, from ANIMAL MASKS ON THE FLOOR OF THE OCEAN pages 169 through 208, from MOTHERLINGS pages 209 through 212, AFTERNOTES pages 213 through 235, New Poems ~ 13.00 can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-1 or CashApp: $BartonSmock email bartonsmock@yahoo.com for PDF copy
city 21 Future is the part of the snake the astronauts eat last. * city 22 Sometimes there is no city because everyone is alive.
very happy and deeply thankful for these words on instagram in which a writer calls me a writer. as such:@dirtysacred So I've owed this guy a shout out for a bit. I don't know when I first ran into poetry by @bartonsmock , but I feel like it was some past social media iteration... maybe even MySpace (?) Is it possible that I read him on Xenga? It's hard telling, really. But I feel like I've been reading him off and on for a long time. His words on the page succeed at being playful and interesting. It takes a poet that both loves and hates language on an intimate level to do what he does: turning phrases topsy turvy, letting the rhythm find (or lose) itself. There's a master craftsman at work here. _rocks have the softest shadows_ is a self-published 237 pg collection and _Skin to Skin an Unmarked Life_ is a new chapbook published by Trainwreck Press out of British Columbia, Canada. Both publications are worth your time.
kingsoftrain 