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June 9, 2019 / barton smock

{ As One Fire Consumes Another – poems – John Sibley Williams }

barton smock's avatarISACOUSTIC*

As One Fire Consumes Another
poems, John Sibley Williams
Orison Books, 2019

~

John Sibley Williams is a poet who seemingly writes from memory those invisible psalms that cast language as a font and word as the codename of one who’s kept a diary of the search for yours.  As such, the collection As One Fire Consumes Another knows what to say after it says it while liberating from footnote how the old might guide the current into outlining those shapes bent on being dumbstruck by the new .  No findable thing need make a sound and the already lit won’t court what glows. No toy beast misses its childhood master and if a pin drops it is heard only by the late soul who’s left tapping on  a calculator in the shadow of a cross.  Both instructional and sudden, intentional and evoked, these irreplaceably devoured poems gain ground in…

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June 7, 2019 / barton smock

{ max }

discontinued in total today those books of mine that were self-published, may revisit them, or ghost them instead. if you have one or two, hard in hand, thanks for that, then and now, and I hope they disappeared invisibly.

June 7, 2019 / barton smock

ask and smoke

as a zombie
obsessing

over
a star (why

would an angel
learn
to eat

June 5, 2019 / barton smock

{ Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire – poems – Darren C. Demaree }

barton smock's avatarISACOUSTIC*

Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire
poems, Darren C. Demaree
Harpoon Books 2019

~

If god were here, above this pool in backyard Ohio, I think he’d write with wasp. I say this as the imagined part-owner of a disembodied worry as gifted to any who might look up from Darren C. Demaree’s Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire and feel a sort of third-wheel holiness in the running of a blood that sobers itself alongside Demaree’s converging of absence with artifact. As partnership may absolve loneliness of secretly playing tag and as shadow makes a lost feast for long animals, Emily, like inclusion, is untouchable. Using simile as bait for metaphor, and metaphor to say in the same breath both pain and paint, this verse fishes compass from the ashes of emergence. These are love, or better yet, loved, poems, but no phrasing here brackets…

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June 5, 2019 / barton smock

I want to talk about joy

be
as an owl

and envy
the bat
its dancing
in the voice
of god (pray for the giant

who with
a camera

holds creation
over
the nude (then spider

your hands
to cover
the ears
of stones

June 4, 2019 / barton smock

{ aches, etc }

~~~~~

animal masks on the floor of the ocean

mouse, teacup of the missing stork-

owl, lamb of night-

this was god. he was sad and everyone noticed.

~~~~~

deer ache

i.

my god a failed author who describes

the creature left in eden
to the creature
not

ii.

my…

iii.

a rocking horse taken by helicopter

~~~~~

design ache

how sick
was christ
we’ll never
know
but a bird
and a fish
dream
in halves
of outlasting

touch
(this ghost
that prays
for its jailer
the mime

~~~~~

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.

~~~~~

scene ache

in Ohio, a father mows the lawn of a friend and swallows what he thinks is a bug and that night

as he wonders if the bug will ever be finished
kissing
its eggs

his children tell him
to drink
something hot, his children

who compare
rug burns
and wait

for their invisible toys
to believe
all at once
in god

~~~~~

film ache

at a certain height, nudity loses meaning

if bunk beds collapse in a museum made for emptiness, does Ohio

roll
from a crystal
ball

no hawk
is a wasp, but every

wasp…

I remember also when you called a tattoo

postage
for the afterlife

I see a tornado
and my teeth
turn yellow

~~~~~

too old to pray

one has
in Ohio
that crucial
dream

the wasp and the footprint

~~~~~

 

June 3, 2019 / barton smock

I want to talk about joy

but instead
ask the holy spirit
about the two
action figures
cleaning
themselves
in the dark…

(choose the god that will know when you’ve died

June 3, 2019 / barton smock

{ spiritual correctives etc }

SPIRITUAL

CORRECTIVES

~~~~~

you think
you might
be art. her mastering

of his blindspot
for imagery…

(every rock you throw is a bird that can’t breathe

~~~~~

sons says he falls asleep reading to his teeth. son whose size has gone to confess.

put

oh son

god’s hand
through a wall. a fingernail

on my tongue (rib

in luck’s
grave

~~~~~

I don’t have time
to be smart
but everyone
in this movie
thinks a snowglobe
is a moth
on fire

for years I thought the pain I was eating came to my mouth in a dream

argument for there is: were it otherwise,
we’d both be the child of two rotting forms

argument for there is no: a country dog
nodding headcounts
to a family
of sticks

~~~~~

about the birdhouse
dad found
in a church-

I ask
the wrong
storm

is your son a mouse

chewing
on a star?

our blood
wants to pray
outside

~~~~~

the worst advice that hunger gives is to dream of eating.

let your mail tell you where to live.

let there be
in god’s mouth

a bread crumb dressed as a fingerprint.

the shape of this stone makes me worried for symbols.

~~~~~

sobbing

(a form
of abuse

sleep

(god
mid-miracle
dies

saltshaker

(the cowbell of grief

sobbing

(there is a boy
for every
boy

born

(outnumbered

window

(they caught the person who was painting our baby blue

~~~~~

smoking over the empty crib, he calls anything that’s crawled on me the lost hand of god. I don’t care if you’re alone. for the skydiver (whose thoughts on crucifixion

~~~~~

if presence

be a nakedness
survived
by nostalgia
and by
homage, then presence

a milk
in memory
of shape

or shape
oh shape

would-be astronaut

your head
is too small
(but oh how light

the gun you make
of your hand

I am not as alone as I remember

or only
our only

possession

(the belly-dancer’s
muted
radar

~~~~~

I know it happened slowly-

his private
recognition
of every
face.

a leaf in the mouth
of his jesus-on-the-cross.

that aggressive dove.

~~~~~

what is hunger but looking at the shape your mouth didn’t bring? what is the past, the present, the future

but glue stick, puberty, grief

god but the nothing

my hair
does at night

~~~~~

rabbit’s wheelchair

to re
trace

the half
circle
of loss, god

checking
on the length

of her flight

~~~~~

can you tell whose handwriting I use

for fiction
and for non, whose scar

was rubbed
the wrong way

by doll, whose mother

keyed cars
while pregnant

~~~~~

June 2, 2019 / barton smock

softenings

to get its dog back, the angel had to burn a bush. tell me I’m pretty. father fusses over a line-break and mother over the milk we trade for paper. I’m sad, but tell me anyway.

May 31, 2019 / barton smock

boredom

i.

a hospital
window
painted
by a siren
that doesn’t
sound

ii.

the fossil brush that sadness drops