kingsoftrain

February 4, 2019 / barton smock

{ some lost revisions }

{stork blood}

–

my sister brought a tub of snow inside to dig a baby from and god’s little narc shook a rattle at a fish tank.

–

are you barn
or missile

silo

sad?

–

(across town, a silent alarm is pressed by the anonymous smoker of wedding cigarettes

(across town, a mother scrubs at a dinner plate with a clump of hair and tells her boy she is not balding

–

look: I love your father’s thumbtack moon and I love that bruises recall to us the botched renderings of paw prints.

look: when I read to my son, he tries to fork the fireworks in the back of his head. there is no place where nothing should be.

(and it is so
never suddenly
late

–

in the dream our longing prepares, memory is a man dying in the ocean and becoming a ghost there.

–

each a form of angel hazing
are bewildered
church
and stray
field

–

mother touches the doll with kid gloves that fit. externally, I believe in masks. internally, that a sponge is living off my hand.

–

I wait for my mother to fall asleep, for my father to carry her upstairs, and for my brothers to go outside

their fingers as horns
on the sides of their heads…

–

a chalkboard eraser
still strikes me
as useless-

a boat
in the hand
of god

–

February 4, 2019 / barton smock

{ a. like. part. }

some alike & apart / from Dec 2018 & Jan 2019

*

[centipede]

a bookmark made by mother from the fingerprints of god. a stretcher mourned by a ladder. the last nerve of grief. recipe from the beginner’s guide to poverty. neckwear. dream’s comet.

*

[snow notes]

waiting
to photograph
an Ohio
bathtub, my father
chainsmokes
in a stalled
car

(a peephole
disappears

and a rabbit’s
foot

*

[my brothers leave Ohio for other parts of Ohio]

(the pets
last longer
than a bruise

*

[form notes]

you are poor and have the wrists of a beachcomber. god writes a play about sleep. I rest my eyes and my father’s microphone becomes the nightmare my mother has where she presses the fingernail no ant is under. you think you’re the ghost of your mouth.

*

[sleep]

/ the broken hand of my whale-watching mother

// bruise
that plays
god

/// an owl
from the waist
up

*

[entries for son]

I lose in one ear my hearing when you dream
–
what god
would say
don’t die

*

[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

*

[softenings]

ghost wouldn’t dream the angel but to see it naked. wouldn’t dream god but to understand. moth
but to disrobe.

*

[moral narcissism]

fossil, cloud…

it’s okay to like your little life.

I have proof.

*

[detections]

we talk of teeth and of how a son closed his mouth in a dream. two of our children hug and as one are mistaken by mirror for the jawbone of god. dog is half-thunder, half-ambulance. limp if you love me.

*

[goings]

i.

there is a form god’s form doesn’t take

ii.

(I thought if I held my son a certain way…

iii.

boy to see a tadpole faint

*

[I listen with my brother for frostbitten thunder]

(as sleep makes oven the birthmark of the home

(as god spots crow at the grave of a rooster

*

[every bird I take from the ocean becomes a handful of snow]

& somewhere the small machine that your father fixed

is on its only leg

*

[in the bewildered minority]

stoplight.

the unbrushed
hair
of a weak
showerhead.

pre-grief erections.

owl
hymns
for pulled
ears.

*

[in the book about nothing]

where so many
are survived
by the eldest
babymaker
still abusing
his dinosaur
is the spread
of loneliness
you remember
stopping

*

[could be you’ll die]

in front of something
god remembers

*

February 3, 2019 / barton smock

{ ghost/arson }

kingsoftrain

ghostarsonsample

from Ghost Arson (Kung Fu Treachery Press 2018)

have copies, on my person, now.

if you’ve read it, skimmed it, or rewritten it…say something somewhere.

~

if interested in reviewing, contact me at ghostarson@gmail.com

book is 15.00 / orders 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
**all copies will be signed

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/

facebook live reading: https://www.facebook.com/barton.smock/videos/10155837390135423/

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February 2, 2019 / barton smock

person Anointing Obuh, one poem

ISACOUSTIC*

Anointing Obuh is an emerging writer from Africa. She enjoys reading, writing & a hearty meal. Her works are forthcoming at The Cabinet of Heed and Honey&Like. She currently studies English and literature at a Nigerian University.

/

What was my mother thinking when she named me

There are no humming no mocking
birds here in black Africa where
sounds travel faster than a mother’s voice in my ear
Like the kukuruku on a birds beak
Like the pum pim pum.. I can’t be a trumpet sound if I tried
I can’t be.
Living through war all the time.

My mother called me Omoyeme
& her legs bent into a house
My child is greater, my child is greater than
Makes me want to offer myself up
For sins yet unborn, not ready to be offered

My lover says I carry a nightingale in my mouth
He didn’t…

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February 2, 2019 / barton smock

{ Kelli Allen’s ~Banjo’s Inside Coyote~ }

ISACOUSTIC*

banjos-inside-coyote_72-dpi

Please check out former contributor Kelli Allen’s Banjo’s Inside Coyote (C&R Press), here:

Banjo’s Inside Coyote

/

Kelli Allen at {isacoustic*}

on Imagine Not Drowning by Kelli Allen:

Imagine Not Drowning – poems – Kelli Allen

poem:

person Kelli Allen, one poem

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February 2, 2019 / barton smock

person Estrella del Valle, three poems translated by Toshiya Kamei

ISACOUSTIC*

Born in Córdoba, Veracruz, Estrella del Valle now lives in El Paso, Texas. Her most recent poetry collection, Calima: CAution LIve aniMAls, was published in 2018. Translations of her poems have appeared in various journals, including Burnside Review, Coe Review, Controlled Burn, International Poetry Review, and Pembroke Magazine.

Toshiya Kamei holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Arkansas. His translations of Latin American literature include books by Claudia Apablaza, Liliana Blum, Carlos Bortoni, Selfa Chew, and Leticia Luna. For more information, please visit https://toshiyakamei.wordpress.com/.

)(

Genealogy

The first woman from my line
was a nobody who picked an apple.
Through tears she birthed the love of her man.
Someone foolishly made up a family name.
Since then all women whine;
we were born dim and wicked.
That’s the story my father tells us,
but I know in former times
the first woman who took our name

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January 31, 2019 / barton smock