four figures in the desert, by a rock, or a stone
the language
that they speak
only makes
sense
under the
water.
View original post 209 more words
from collection [Ghost Arson]
TUBE FEEDING
the boy who in the middle of performing a handstand finds god just as she’s creating the oceans after being overtaken by a herd of ghosts
*
HOW I WANT YOU TO REMEMBER MY SISTER
in a puppet show
about washing
my son’s
feet, or waving down
the ice cream truck
with her bible, or
as farewell
to nothing’s
church
of neither
*
from collection [MOTHERLINGS]
JAW NOTES
it is okay
(in the afterglow
of a mother’s
childhood
hiding place)
to live
as a dull
child (on bits of eggshell
from the angel’s mouth
*
BREVITIES
if told by your hands to set myself on fire, I would pray my father into a snake and death would cry in a whale for every bee that lost its voice.
*
from collection [Animal Masks On the Floor of the Ocean]
MATERIALS
ache as a hairstyle. teeth that pray for frostbitten squirrels. a shadow, a circle, their secret
limp
~~~~~
with my body as a thing that existed from the waist-up, I became to swimming what I’d been to lightning and told my brothers that to dream they had to fall asleep before god touched his food. loneliness left its skinny tree and followed my mother into an outhouse where once her sister had counted smoke-rings and where twice they’d sung for their mouths the one about zero the forgotten letter. my father looked at me and I at my son. time waiting to create the sick.
*
[as such]
MOTHERLINGS, 52 pages, 4.00
poems, June 2019
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-1
(self-published)
/
Animal Masks On the Floor of the Ocean, 114 pages, 10.00
poems, June 2019
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-1
(self-published)
/
Ghost Arson, 15.00
poems, full-length
Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2018
orders for signed copies can be made via paypal to ghostarson@gmail.com or by using link:
PayPal.Me/ghostarson
or via Venmo: @Barton-Smock-1
*be sure to include your address in the notes field
or one can send a check to:
Barton Smock
5155 Hatfield Drive
Columbus, OH 43232
on amazon:
at barnes & noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ghost-arson-barton-smock/1129931893?ean=9781946642868
*
[some recent, elsewhere, work]
at The Collidescope:
https://thecollidescope.wordpress.com/2019/07/07/goodbyes-for-exodus/
so excited to have three poems up at The Collidescope, where George Salis and Nicole Melchionda are doing real work.
three poems, here:
https://thecollidescope.wordpress.com/2019/07/07/goodbyes-for-exodus/
the crow’s fear of inclusion. eve’s perfectly forgotten ribs. the nothing I mean to my dentist. the cemetery where all the un-boyed went to eat paper. the band-aid in the belly of a baptized child. yawn of kites.
upon waking, my son knows he’s been moved. beside him I am crooked until he bites my arm. he is as heavy as the stomach of the angel that nightly kisses mine. illness has the patience of a shadow but cannot teach my eyes to kneel. time is god’s tenure as the lost tooth of sleep.
I stand in a ruined field and preach longevity to a god that stares through me at the empty highchair of some freckled thing. my age is with me, there, and there to mean how far can I throw my food. if I close my eyes, I can see touch as a mirror that’s been used by my mother to describe sleep.
perhaps I am the thing that overtook me. that in its becoming was able to feel guilty about doing so. what if death is just looking for the one it’s named after. lonely I can almost see my eyes.
I can’t sit
for very long
without wanting
to smoke.
this is the flower
I pick
for my ghost.
i.
RECENT:
two privately self-published collections available via paypal:
MOTHERLINGS, 52 pages, 4.00
poems, June 2019
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
Animal Masks On the Floor of the Ocean, 114 pages, 10.00
poems, June 2019
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
~~~~~
ii.
LESS RECENT, MORE REAL:
full-length collection Ghost Arson (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2018)
orders for signed copies can be made via paypal to ghostarson@gmail.com or by using link:
PayPal.Me/ghostarson
*be sure to include your address in the notes field
or one can send a check to:
Barton Smock
5155 Hatfield Drive
Columbus, OH 43232
also available on amazon:
or
at barnes & noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ghost-arson-barton-smock/1129931893?ean=9781946642868
Dd Spungin, review of Ghost Arson: https://kingsoftrain.com/2018/11/28/dd-spungins-review-of-ghost-arson/
George Salis, review of Ghost Arson: https://kingsoftrain.com/2018/12/17/review-by-george-salis-of-barton-smocks-ghost-arson/
~
infant*cinema, chapbook, Dink Press, April 2016
7.00
https://www.dinkpress.com/store/infant-cinema-barton-smock-dp2
for signed copy, email bartonsmock@yahoo.com
~~~~~
iii.
MISC:
subscribe TINYLETTER
https://tinyletter.com/BartonSmock
~
a day
View original post 13 more words
punched in our stomachs for remembering the sea, we are in a church that goes to church. it is here that a drop of god’s blood can change paper into plastic and here that bread is the bread and butter of hunger and hunger the oldest child in nothing’s choir. here that I count for a son who cannot count. for a son who sleeps on land on the lamb of his illness. (water is still the smallest toy and our mouths still come
from the same
noise
kingsoftrain 