handmade
would you
believe
The stone has one thought before it dies
and that thought
turns it
to stone
(The trick is to lose every child
Or is it
each
the ghost
invents
color
there is in fact a time
exactly like
the present
The children they dig a hole and give the hole a name and a backache. They ask was I ever their age and slip a housefire-in-a-seashell under the pillow of an endless angel. It’s not what I say but in truth the older a thing gets, the younger its god.
wind
the weigher
of its own
wound, when
(did my body
know
what form took from me
again we speak
(they are making
it now)
the forgetful
weapon
was there a moment I was wanted
past life and all, was there
a nest a whale, has this
been me
in a mothered
before)
(looking at a pill while picking a flower
time
temporary
Sickness knows that sleep makes us human.
I die
then the day
changes
Huge thanks to all at Poetry at Sangam and especially to guest editor Sophia Naz for selecting six poems of mine for Volume VIII / Issue 5 (December 2020)
~
Sophia Naz:
Barton Smock is the poet about whom Kazim Ali said that “All the advanced degrees and publishing credentials in the world can’t get you the unspeakable duende that Smock somehow taps into, poem after poem.” Barton’s poems are diaphanous enigmas and the fact that they defy logic and can’t be neatly boxed into this or that category is precisely their beauty. God appears a lot in Smock’s poetry, but he is always a lower case god, disconcertingly intimate. The saints and Sufis of yore would recognize Barton Smock as one of their ilk.
~
*The author photo is of me with my grandfather’s pipe…which means something to me for the right reasons. My last publication had a photo…
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