EDINBURGH NOTEBOOK
Valerie Mejer Caso
translated by Michelle Gil-Montero
photographs by Barry Shapiro
Action Books 2020
Locally unpredictable with a prehuman freezeframe warmth, Valerie Mejer Caso’s Edinburgh Notebook, as silently translated to vividity by Michelle Gil-Montero, and as unseen from below by photographer Barry Shapiro, is a work of angel bandages and spirit health that is transported and stilled by that ghost vein of connection that puts a body to our ways of being elsewhere. It’ll bring you to the knees of another. I think there is a car accident. I think there is a shadow that would burn itself fatherless on its sunbathing mother. I think there was and then I think there wasn’t. Mejer Caso catches time yawning.
~
reflection by Barton Smock
A tree will grow around the death it cannot have. Lightning displays only the suddenness of its roots. A deer stares at god. Counts to ten. Doesn't know.
an animal
small enough
to pull you from
its name
said on
the radio…
rains
in my stomach
when you
hear rain
Ohio snow wasn’t real I wrote that it was did you see your son collecting the same rock everyday the same rock its vigil for the twisted ankle of a ghost on its way to god well well the veins of the moon are never full your son goes even from heaven missing yes from there he was there
from collection 'apartures':
WAYSIDES
Brother peeling a hidden orange.
A smoke ring where once
our mouse
played dead.
Hearing loss
in a mother's
wrist.
~
house 1
we are slow with our loneliness
so slow that god
thinks in twos
the snow comes for other snow
a spoon
prays
to a mirror
no one can watch
and the snow
gets away
~
house 3
whose childhood
was the longest
there is always
one friend
with a nosebleed
~
MORE AND MORE POEMS ABOUT SLEEP
a cigarette burn and a bitemark fight over a tooth from the dryer
jesus
was just a kid
~
APARTURE
Yesterday, distance destroyed its early work.
Fog machines fell asleep.
I let my son bite me and believed
for three hours
that it was today.
You told me underwater
about the fog machines.
God looked like death. Death saw.
~
apartures, 125 pages
poems, January 2023
collection is pay-what-you-want
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com
blood to bathe us in its blue past, 217 pages
poems new and selected, May 2022
Pay what you want
via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com
~
some poems, from:
GHOSTALGIA
A drop of blood lands in an eye-sized field.
Imagine
waking up
to cry.
Hide the hidden ant of your son’s loneliness.
~~~
GHOSTALGIA
By the time darkness touches every map, the baby is useless. God a mistake mistaken for a childhood's double life. If there is a horse, there is a horse
thinking only of itself yet also
on the kindness
of a past
horse.
Sight cooks my eye in a voided spoon.
~~~
SAYMOST
No one in the elevator when it dies
-
By x-ray I mean many stars will find my son
Silent
baby’s
baby
silence
wowed
to be given
such tender
access
to the school
shooting
that wasn’t
we ate
in cars
that worked
got sick
of porn
deer
what else
the rich
couple
their baby
turned by god
into three
I grew a spider
in a lightbulb
it came
all this way
to shrivel
in worship
before a picture
of my mother
at nineteen
thinking
of her sister
her sister
her sister
I had two dreams
two different
uncles
they both
drank
and cried
one wanted
me to see
his haircut
the other
wanted
his daughter
to stop
dying
anyway
the un
identified
body
is a body
so police
that
police it
until it kills
itself
on a budget
from 1981
I did
not eat
today
my poor
uncles
her sister
and
my
mom
The body is a scam.
I don’t know what heaven becomes when everyone has died.
Some wild
last
dog
with a numb
mouth…
Some human
tongue
mistaken for a bar
of soap
or unbathed
fish…
Unlove me, I write.
Then say.
kingsoftrain 