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September 18, 2020 / barton smock

afternotes

touch
kills the future
but uses
at least
the whole
animal

all nostalgia
is impostor
nostalgia

find a snake
made of sleep
and addicted
to rain

September 14, 2020 / barton smock

afternotes

could be we’re only attractive when thinking about the past.

I know
how long
you were old.

September 14, 2020 / barton smock

our patient childhoods like two churches left in the same tornado

and god a meal
that switches
bodies

September 9, 2020 / barton smock

some invisible second

that an insect
misremembers

September 8, 2020 / barton smock

jesus keeps dying

in the song, my father goes in and out of sleep on a stretcher that his mother took from a movie set.

I like that my teeth protect my teeth.

September 3, 2020 / barton smock

afternotes

touch is at first
a bowl
and then
a smaller
bowl

as
for sleep
I’ll die
in yours

she writes
to notice
nothing

August 26, 2020 / barton smock

for the short time that existence pretends to be you

god and pain have the same god

August 14, 2020 / barton smock

no great turtle to straighten the dead

no great turtle
to straighten
the dead
no
not here
in Ohio

an Ohio
that eats
its weight
in spiders
an Ohio

of slow
obsessions
effortless
sorrows

a lifejacket
on fire
a pebble
named
after blood’s
ear
a thunderclap

the late
crawl
of a dizzy
child

August 11, 2020 / barton smock

a slow land

in the mother’s dream
a brother and a sister
watch a movie
without a name

a movie that between them
is called
This Is Not
A Dream

there’s no one
in the movie

water holds an animal
and sometimes
there are buildings
that buildings
describe

death gets to name every baby but its own

August 7, 2020 / barton smock

prolonged attempts at coping

mostly this movie is about what I don’t want to see in a movie

son is trying to hold behind his ear a slice of orange (however long you think a day is

his hands are by it
getting smaller

talent doesn’t keep God awake

what the angel does with its half of the caterpillar…

(is it still
all about
location

the shop
of your
forgetting