~
from animal masks on the floor of the ocean
long gone are the insects
you forgave
this storm, the whale
of oblivion’s
white feast, this moon
the word
moon
*
I go places
in my ghost
that are children
when I arrive. they call me
high grass, lord
of the wind’s
blood. most of them
have lost
babies
with dog
names
to birth
or touch, our brief
attractions
to déjà vu
*
to be unthought of is to be one more person away from pain. no cricket you hear is alone. in my boy’s drawing of jesus, the ears are all wrong. his first sad poem is about an oven. his second calls dust the blood of a seashell. his third is so terrible that I tell my friends I’m just a gravedigger who wants to open a hair salon. my friends they are made of grief and brilliance. they say they like mirrors that have in them, how do I say this?, a lost theft. I sleep and my sister paints my nails. kisses my head. she is no shape and then a shape that occurs to a horse my son thinks will live.
~
from Motherlings
SNOW NOTES
waiting
to photograph
an Ohio
bathtub, my father
chainsmokes
in a stalled
car
(a peephole
disappears
and a rabbit’s
foot
*
TAME ACHE
soap carvings
of birds
pulled mostly
from a son’s
thunderstorm…
here and there
a worm
wrapped around
a stone.
all imagery is the same.
if the food
is in your mouth
it’s too late.
*
ASK AND SMOKE
as a zombie
obsessing
over
a star (why
would an angel
learn
to eat
~
from an old idea one had of stars
BRINK ACHE
we died
in that dream
but continued
to understand.
I thought
sleeping
skin-to-skin
with my children
would cure
your fear
of flossing. every bomb
touches god.
I forgot
to be in pain.
*
Afternotes
and here I tell my son, who’s never heard a cricket, how long I believed in god.
~
from Ghost Arson
Wrist Musics
this crow
with its black
worm
knows your father
feels loss
in the neck
*
Stopping to Pray
how angelic
the nervousness
of insects
offering acne
to god
/ to glacier, crow is not
yet a thing
~
for purchase:
Ghost Arson (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2018)
on amazon:
at barnes & noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ghost-arson-barton-smock/1129931893?ean=9781946642868
~
privately self published:
animal masks on the floor of the ocean, 124 pages, 10.00, June 2019
Motherlings, 52 pages, 4.00, June 2019
an old idea one had of stars, 58 pages, 8.00, February 2020
via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-1
an old idea one had of stars
POEMS
58 pages
February 2020
privately self published collection
by Barton Smock
PDFs available for free
free hard copy for those interested in reviewing
8.00
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-1
you die
in this poem
so often
by my
unwrapped
hand
that god
promises
to salt
them less
the tornadoes
Perhaps, in another past, she cares for those beasts removed by God from the path of her loneliness. And maybe it was there you listened for her supplier’s footsteps
when it was lost in the move the empty bird of your faith
Ohio math:
If born, your baby has given your name to God. If not, not so fast, your baby has a sister who has two sisters and together they eat what can only be described as a chameleon abandoned by its ghost. Here are things to keep apart: My understanding of musicals and my brother’s of bulimia. He and hymn.
privately self published work:
Animal Masks On the Floor of the Ocean, 124 pages, 10.00
poems, June 2019
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-1
MOTHERLINGS, 52 pages, 4.00
poems, June 2019
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-1
*be sure to include your mailing address in the comments of the order. any questions can be directed to bartsmock@gmail.com
PDFs free upon request.
~
praise for previous work:
The work of Barton Smock, a prolific mid-western poet, modifies the meaning of Christian Wiman’s idea in that it seeks unceasingly for the spaces between those ‘annihilative silence[s]’ that would pursue us, and for the watchful reader opens some door into human experience in a way that is at once intensely personal and detached. Through the manipulation of both common and cerebral language Smock’s poems maintain a dance between the familiar and the unspeakable. They act…
View original post 384 more words
Baby Teeth, Ohio:
I have
in the rain
long hair
like your mother
Moods for bloodflow:
The skin listens to itself pray.
I am never more than a peephole
taller
than my brother.
Overheard in god’s pharmacy
(that’s
gonna leave
a star
Mother as one who gives birth to avoid confrontation. Years from now, I exist. I want a cigarette, a puppy, and Jesus
on the cross. I wrestle the brother who wrestles as if he’s sobbing inside an elephant. People die on purpose. The world’s smallest inventor tries her thumb at bulletproof bullets. Pray puppets for puppet rain.
privately self published work:
Animal Masks On the Floor of the Ocean, 124 pages, 10.00
poems, June 2019
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-1
MOTHERLINGS, 52 pages, 4.00
poems, June 2019
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-1
*be sure to include your mailing address in the comments of the order. any questions can be directed to bartsmock@gmail.com
PDFs free upon request.
~
praise for previous work:
The work of Barton Smock, a prolific mid-western poet, modifies the meaning of Christian Wiman’s idea in that it seeks unceasingly for the spaces between those ‘annihilative silence[s]’ that would pursue us, and for the watchful reader opens some door into human experience in a way that is at once intensely personal and detached. Through the manipulation of both common and cerebral language Smock’s poems maintain a dance between the familiar and the unspeakable. They act as a shout to the silences that curl up in experience- offering some view from the inside of that experience, but never in an expected way.
…The themes of family, abuse, poverty, and alienation figure heavily in the book, but to call this confessional poetry seems a bit out of keeping with what is traditionally considered confessional. He speaks of mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers while also utilizing the first person, but the reader can never be exactly sure who these characters are. They are changeable, and often engaging in nearly surreal activity that might confuse more than enlighten. The key seems to be finding some language to quantify suffering, or some way of qualifying experience out of context – which at moments brings it ever more sharply into sight…
…Smock has found a way to speak for those who don’t perhaps know that they have something important to say; to share. The marginalized child, the grieving mother, the ailing child or sibling- they will all find a voice here, and though it might not be the way they would voice the affliction that rests within them, they are sure to recognize their faces. Whether this is a burden or a blessing remains a judgment to be formed by the individual reader, but I find the poetry…to be full of the intensity of experience in a way that I can’t help but identify and empathize. Something preserved so as not to be forgotten, and perhaps repeated.
~Emma Hall
Speaking of being captivated, when I was in Cleveland’s most exciting new independent bookstore, Guide to Kulchur, I picked up on a whim a few small volumes that appeared to have been published by the author using Lulu. I was so entranced by the seemingly simple but endlessly complex, prickly lyrics that I wrote to the author, Barton Smock, through his blog, kingsoftrain.wordpress.com. He’s been sending me books now and then and his latest, Eating the Animal Back to Life, is just knocking me out. These poems are desperate, tender, wry, alarmed, god-obsessed, and musically driven. Smock is not published by others, he does it all himself…
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.
~Kazim Ali, from
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/11/reading-list-november-2015
kingsoftrain 