Skip to content
March 25, 2020 / barton smock

from ( diets of the resurrected )

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

March 22, 2020 / barton smock

from ( diets of the resurrected )

Most boys in Ohio have carried that rare dog that can worry about growing old into a store that only accepts prize money. Ohio can’t be everywhere. A hole falls out of the wind and the abuse stops.

March 20, 2020 / barton smock

from ( diets of the resurrected )

Ohio’s underwater cure for hiccups:

how sorry
I am
that ghost
is bored

swim
in a way
that says

March 19, 2020 / barton smock

from ( diets of the resurrected )

Lone high, Ohio:

stars, I guess

and a trapdoor
for a certain
kind
of turtle

and stars
for sure

March 19, 2020 / barton smock

{ In The Field Between Us – poems – Molly McCully Brown + Susannah Nevison }

barton smock's avatarISACOUSTIC*

In The Field Between Us
Molly McCully Brown + Susannah Nevison
Persea Books, 2020

~

It is possible our maker knows we are makerless. What can we do? Pair up, perhaps. Read outwardly, together, this In The Field Between Us, placed so mortally within by poets Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison. Look, I have wanted to write you. But instead I cup my hands by holding this book while elsewhere I clay and call inside its impression of response. Oh body, with your origin stories for mirrors. Oh eye, with your cut of arrival’s winnings. I was wrong to think correspondence would turn one lonely. Here, in a verse predating what is both former and latter, are two as two bringing transport to a standstill. Should I go on? Can I? How pure and wrecked can language be? I can’t say, but start here. There are tools used in…

View original post 24 more words

March 18, 2020 / barton smock

( poems at MacQueen’s Quinterly

have some poems at MacQueen’s Quinterly…huge thanks to Clare MacQueen and also to Alexis Rhone Fancher…

http://www.macqueensquinterly.com/MacQ2/Smock-Quintet-Poems.aspx

March 16, 2020 / barton smock

from ( diets of the resurrected )

Moods for nigh:

Sipped from worship, a mother will hide in her throat the lost paw of thirst. How long are we? No one says loss anymore.

March 12, 2020 / barton smock

from ( diets of the resurrected )

Moods for believable midwestern symbols:

When we realize that water cannot take us to where water lives, every television in Ohio stops what it’s doing to wash a ghost. Our friendless baby calls no one. I am not kind, but put my body between mine and yours.

March 10, 2020 / barton smock

from ( diets of the resurrected )

Lying to the basilisk:

You spoke to me through an egg for so long that the back of my neck changed moons. If I think hard enough, I can still see your mother putting in her mouth the glove her god treated like a baby’s hand. I cook a mirror. I cook for an orphan made of sleep. Will our breath always be the bone that didn’t make it into the wing of thirst? If it’s a boy, pick for an alien a flower. Dogs forget their human year.

March 6, 2020 / barton smock

{ the year our son

~

THE YEAR OUR SON THOUGHT HIS BELLY BUTTON WAS GOING TO EAT HIM

was a fast year, a goldfish

trapped
in a doorknob
kind

of year, our daughter

cut her heels
on the bottom
of a pool

that was there

~

THE YEAR OUR SON THOUGHT HARD ON NOTHING ON A FARM MACHINE

I bought myself a nailgun
telling the people
at church

it was for
a movie, also

a child
in hell
asked

to tie
my shoe, and a neighbor

brought it up
the baby
inside

the baby

~

THE YEAR OUR SON ATE ONLY MEALS PREPARED BY INSOMNIACS

was the same
possible
year
he tried

to kill himself
because I couldn’t
stop him

but back
to the insomniacs

they weren’t

family

~

THE YEAR OUR SON SPOTTED DEER ON THE MOON

it made
some sense
then
to cut
our past
in half

~

THE YEAR OUR SON THOUGHT WE LOVED HIM

lasted longer than most dogs
but there was
this one
stray
we saw
often

it had one
abandoned
healthy
eye
inside of which

our belongings
were small enough
to have

~