–
of her son’s feeding tube, she says the shadow in her stomach has pulled off its ears
–
distance is the god of those who don’t need rest
–
would any one of you cut the baby
into thirds
to make
me a mother?
–
is that circle dead?
–
Nicole Melchionda:Anti-Heroin Chic is an inclusive journal that aims to explore the gritty depths of the human experience. When you started this project, was your primary goal to unify others, to fill some kind of emptiness, or something else entirely? Have your goals evolved over time?
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in your ear is a spider afraid of the way I swim.
I remain made of
nothing
the winningest
prophet
if I could love them all, they wouldn’t be here. movies make her father angry. he asks her what is always trapped but never surrounded. her heart is an owl with a heart. mirror, she says, but doesn’t. a rain relearns the earth.
Hijito
poems, Carlos Andrés Gómez
Platypus Press, 2019
~
Somewhere between the ‘sly mirror‘ and ‘taut mirage’ of Hijito, poet Carlos Andrés Gómez sees ourselves in ourselves and then goes about the tender flesh-work of putting us there. Though I’m not sure we can keep death from acting like a child, or that we can trace the living back to life, the humane spacing claimed in this verse allows room for all to believe that to make dust of our chalk supply we must age death with our knowledge of where its bodies are. No matter how intricately dead we find ourselves while fixing the hair of the young and ruminating on how suddenly another thing exists to put a crib toy in its mouth, Gómez plays the long game in deconstructing the alibis oft given by brevity and, in doing so, reveals precision to be just another disguise…
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Something Akin To
poems, Kaleigh Maeby
Dink Press, 2019
~
If, beneath those who argue the font of absence, there is one under the table who, while dreamily reporting on the feast, renders a remix unmothered might it usher the original into being, then this one may be one of many reading or writing poet Kaleigh Maeby’s deceptively freeing collection Something Akin To. Odd, local, and sovereign, the work is a fragmentary gathering of thrice-lost things, to include the repetitive body, the faceless child, the knee of the ant. These entries as written are either memo or epitaph, and Maeby understands each as the separated twin of the love letter and adjusts accordingly the abrupt lullaby of the duo’s teased sleep. I believe in clear and close and sparse art such as this, as it leaves to the imagination the downfall of those children of Goliath who here and…
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not a yesterday goes by I don’t pretend to know everyone. mom has eaten the snail. her father is still being shot.
poems at Underfoot Poetry:
https://underfootpoetry.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/barton-smock-7-poems/
three poems at The Collidescope, here:
https://thecollidescope.wordpress.com/2019/07/07/goodbyes-for-exodus/
interview at The Collidescope, here:
https://thecollidescope.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/hungrily-poetic-an-interview-with-barton-smock/
interview at Flyway Journal, here:
http://flywayjournal.org/book-reviews/interview-with-barton-smock-author-of-ghost-arson/
~
recent self-published collections available:
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
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
I didn’t lose a tooth, says the child, there’s just one you can’t see. not a single horse has remembered to spy on the devil. that fish went right through me and I dream it back. mom never has a stick. the food in our stomachs dies at different speeds.
kingsoftrain 