Ohio religions:
someone I don’t know
described you
to me
not
recently
but anyway
there were animals
not created
by god
confused
by the naming
make death
fear you, not me
we all hear
that kid
& poetry
can’t be
the birthplace
of god
I thought having the child
would change
the child
old soul, some said, and sickness
a dream
god rents
to ghost
Ohio puberty:
they sing
in the locker room
to what
is mine, a scarecrow
for insects
etc
and then
they are saying
it backward
my safe
word
The Wishbone Dress
poems, Cassandra J. Bruner
Bull City Press, 2019
~
I worry sometimes that I have been invisibly abandoned. That a context left unsaid has given its art to a museum obsessed with displaying beginnings. Beginnings only. And then, but then, there is work devoid of panic, work unlike, work with words not so much chosen but words more revealed, work that enters the dead and encodes the universal to amplify the specific, work that with its subtle harmony of discovery sings as to horn a ghost a backbone and then lures that ghost into the modified regions of beauty and transitional creation, work that asks existence for the emergency past imposed on another’s sudden body, that asks of our being here what violence we interrupted, work that is only named The Wishbone Dress, and is called into sound by Cassandra J. Bruner. Work I wish you…
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there were three in the garden
they were sharing
a cigarette
their god
had said little
no names, no pets
no lonely, allergic
baby
~
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
