I wait in the outhouse to hear the ghost of my brother speak.
time
to him
is grief gets a puppy, spider
a tail
(in the story of the fish
that wanted
to pray
i.
it isn’t perfect
your mom’s
impression
of my mom
dying (but god
is a mask
and the nose
is broken
ii.
counting squirrels
to make
for dad
a whale
The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded
poems, Molly McCully Brown
Persea Books, 2017
~
As a child, I worried that if those around me lived longer and longer, and that if those I didn’t know remained healthy, then the ghosts I so badly wanted to see would get lonely. Or, as a child, I worried about ghosts. I mention this, here, as I’ve recently read Molly McCully Brown’s The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, a firsthand recreation that doubles origin, and any actual age seems now an exit for distance. These poems, patient and unsparing, do not give voice to, nor take voice from, but instead listen so accurately as to safely carry sound in its ear-shaped cradle from the ruins of its temporary past while opening for touch its unreachable window. Thankful and serious, this narrative drowning, this new air, is an act of…
View original post 48 more words
Ohio deaths
~
(i)
every stick I throw
a ghost
of my grandfather’s
wand—
I don’t throw many
it is not a sight
to see
not some cow nudging awake the weakest deer
not pipe tobacco, not smoke, not that spider
from an injured
fog
not a small child
a dog even
trying to use
a spoon
~
(ii)
god’s been gone nine months and all this talk he’s done of being stabbed in a dollhouse struggles to fill a baby
(do animals have songs
do they know
to miss
missing (leave the bragging
to grief
~
(iii)
handstands and loneliness- what infantile reactions we have to existence. I want to eat
but how will they know there was nothing here (this finger
once a rib in the back of your throat
~
(iv)
my son knows his birds by the hands he draws for them. anatomy is perhaps what you make it. grey bruise, blue tongue…
this dream goes nowhere. hell, these chickens
(as if their god was struck by a ghost
~
(v)
this body was never a child
(& birth a spoon
bent to the little
I long
~
(vi)
father cuts my hair as something gentle he can do underwater. he’s broken the bowl that caught his mother’s mouth. we have our mirrors and you your nets. I am the last of his one-eared boys.
~
(vii)
his cigarette going bald, father prepares his food while we touch ours. god swims long enough to miss wind. if there are two babies in the same room, they switch cribs but not teeth. god is a time-traveler selling nostalgia. I can never remember which of mother’s ears is insect and which is litmus. it’s always the second meal
comes from heaven
~
(viii)
I want to be loved so badly that I promise your raccoon the sea. dying means:
my boy falls asleep drinking from a toy boat. god has no friends but even better
my mother has one was born
without a birthday. can an angel
do this? says ghost.
(grief is a thing taught to breathe by its stomach
~
(ix)
it’s dark and all of us are in the wrong stone.
the floor is clean where I learned my shapes.
~
(x)
I cut the pills
sometimes
in advance. (love
that no matter
the day, there are three
god spent
with his son
~
(xi)
(between
online
searches
for tire
swing (mother
sells chalk
to a ghost
~
(xii)
I didn’t miss god or think I was ugly. had mud enough
to make
from memory
the scarecrow’s
stomach. I ate my brothers
they ate
me back. any loss
became a hole
in a snake, any needle
a worshiped
feather…
~
(xiii)
think of wind as a thing that’s mastered its nothingness.
cradle
the unfinished.
yes think, then cradle.
hands shape their own leaving.
~
recent reflections at {isacoustic*}
.
on Molly McCully Brown’s The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded:
.
on Emily Paige Wilson’s I’ll Build Us a Home:
http://isacoustic.com/2019/03/02/ill-build-us-a-home-poems-emily-paige-wilson/
.
on Susannah Nevison’s Lethal Theater:
http://isacoustic.com/2019/02/13/lethal-theater-poems-susannah-nevison/
.
on Katherine Osborne’s Descansos:
http://isacoustic.com/2019/01/02/descansos-poems-katherine-osborne/
.
my first full-length, non self-published, work is titled Ghost Arson (Kung Fu Treachery Press 2018)
have copies, on my person, now.
~
if interested in reviewing, contact me at ghostarson@gmail.com
book is 15.00 / 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
~
on amazon:
at barnes & noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ghost-arson-barton-smock/1129931893?ean=9781946642868
~
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ghostarson/
~
review by Dd. Spungin: https://kingsoftrain.com/2018/11/28/dd-spungins-review-of-ghost-arson/
review by George Salis: https://kingsoftrain.com/2018/12/17/review-by-george-salis-of-barton-smocks-ghost-arson/
interview by Crystal Stone for Flyway Journal: http://flywayjournal.org/book-reviews/interview-with-barton-smock-author-of-ghost-arson/
~
facebook live reading: https://www.facebook.com/barton.smock/videos/10155837390135423/
on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43229602-ghost-arson
think of wind as a thing that’s mastered its nothingness.
cradle
the unfinished.
yes think, then cradle.
hands shape their own leaving.
sheep because sheep looks as if it’s waiting for an angel to have a thought and sheep because the saying of sheep guides the mouth into silence and sheep because if you close one eye in church
the circle my son draws looks like a fish
and circle because I made for it a church and church because he once saw a rabbit that wasn’t and a stomach that was and the two of you
we could not lift
~
DOG MUSICS
i.
brother
while slicing
an apple
changes
his name
to earshot
ii.
an orange eats everything
but its mask. there was no ocean
iii.
until we hid from the storm. ticks are crickets
iv.
that belong to the poor
~
MILK MUSICS
newborn
with back pain.
(the cigarette that takes the pulse of our ghost)
it is raining
on the feet of god
~
THE BEAR
flyless wall. box of baby clothes
in an empty dream
~
SHE MUSICS
saddest
when peeling
an orange
these days
of sink
and crib, the earth
in parts
flat
~
BARN MUSICS
as blind
as hair
yeah that’s
your father
spelled
into baiting
hosanna’s
cricket
by a red
a gaslit
mouse
~
ACCESS MUSICS
I have a friend whose father called every basement the devil’s treehouse. a friend who’s here today because she hid a knife. whose brother met god too early on the path to god and whose mother would jump from anything to fix a tooth…
there are people who don’t smoke
who want to
when it rains
~
REMOTE MUSICS
I write in this tongue and pray in another.
we sleep
and are kissed
by an ear
in three
beds: train, cow, frog.
if you’ve seen one roach,
you’ve seen them all. that’s where they come from.
~
ORPHAN’S VIGIL
i.
strength
not the strength
a statue keeps.
ii.
mother’s hunger
the hunger
of marionettes.
iii.
the beggar
father hides
and the beggar
he hides
behind.
iv.
brother
don’t sleep.
the paper dolls
have been cutting
your hair.
~
THE MEEK, THE MEEK
i.
in him like the sewing needle of god’s mother; is lightning.
in you a koan.
ii.
now that she wants the surgery removed
they tell her
the womb
is a hook
that looks like a womb.
iii.
everywhere work.
stalks
pitch
the golden blood
of brooms.
iv.
mother in her rocker
her eyes
tire swings
her tongue
a cat’s tail.
v.
fourteen
my sister
martyrs herself
under the monkey
mad
in the stoplight.
vi.
in a church
hangs a coat
with a man
in it.
vii.
does not break loose
like they say
all hell.
~
CLAW & CIGARETTE
eating is done fast and alone. teeth
chatter
in the corner.
a rabbit
muscles
in the mouth.
sleepwalking
is like something
brother
won
at the fair.
we nudge him. put the bread
back
of the mouth. think injured
deer, slanted
mailbox.
~
how in a small bed
you shift
might your son
bite
your longer
arm, how a stone
can become a bowl
you see
with your mouth
kingsoftrain 