father likes to say that touch has lost its mind. mother
be like hunger
and forget
nothing.
(the boy is the boy who teaches death
to read
and I am sad
for death
for years
(in the toy aisle, in a circus
restroom, at the roll
of my son’s
spotless
eye, and at the gate
of the all
girl
cemetery
(also shyly
in the more traditional
babies
of god
(their hesitant
fatigue
cares
poetry collections, mine, self-published, are here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad
~
private publications are available via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or https://www.paypal.me/BartonSmock, as such:
chapbook, [BASILISK], 64 pages $5.00
(Feb 2017)
chapbook, [the accepted field], 84 pages $5.00
(May 2017)
chapbook, [in this life another is you], 64 pages $3.00
(Oct 2017)
~
call for submissions: https://isacoustic.com
~
also:
{mood piece for baby blur} is a privately published work of mine consisting of 60 poems that is available to anyone donating 5.00 or more to my poetry journal {isacoustic*}
donation can be made, here:
https://www.paypal.me/BartonSmock
or it can be sent to (bartsmock@gmail.com)
be sure to provide a physical address, to include your name, for the send.
You can check out {isacoustic*}, here:
site: https://isacoustic.com/
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Isacoustic-192435501303710/
twitter: https://twitter.com/isacousticVOL
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isacousticvol/
share, or keep secret.
~
PATREON
in the doing of a thing there is often a lull and in that lull a curvature of worry…
View original post 44 more words
Regis Louis Coustillac is poet living and writing in Cleveland, Ohio. His work has appeared in Brainchild Magazine. You may find him on Instagram @regis_coustillac
*-
If We Woke Without Our Names
They would call you dusk.
They would call you shadow
lengthened into mist.
They would call you fog on
the early road. They would call
me trillium. They would call you
creek bed filled with mud;
They would call me quartz,
lurking in the ripples.
They would call you lunar,
lover of reflected light.
They would call me constellation,
mangled story of stars.
If we woke without our names,
I would call you prism.
I would call you glass rainbow.
I would call you light that dances
along the spectrum of the living.
Kaleidoscope that turns with
the axis of the Earth. I would
call you opal, moonstone,
mosaic of memory and muscle.
I would run my hands…
View original post 203 more words
Kristin Fullerton lives in upstate New York. She is a proud alumna of both Elmira College and University at Albany. Previous work has appeared in Devilfish Review, Maine Review, Panoplyzine, and Zetetic.
{)
Reiterate, Write, Betray
Reiteration:
Peace is not very interesting;
the countless dead confess
the road of the speechless.
You stop listening and I can’t stand
my own mind. I have to speak, nothing
can disown me from myself.
I inhabit no words,
but the words of others. I followed
your footsteps, but I cannot give
to a museum of betrayal,
whatever that means.
I have discovered signs with your eyes.
Such knowledge frightens me, draws
the veil aside under the scrutiny
of daylight, commands:
Write, write!
But there is nothing to say.
Write this: the near past
of language is still betrayal.
A body can lessen what remains to say,
can turn me wrong
at the…
View original post 413 more words
i.
god comes to me in the knowing I’ll not find the one I’m here to replace
ii.
it is hard to carry
a nine-year old
not only
up and down
but also
by design
iii.
I had
what Peter had
three places
to smoke
I worry
without toys
on the sadness
of sons
my brother
is
as I make him
the keeper
of baseball cards
(even now
in pain
I look
at men
he points a pop-gun at a jack-in-the-box
(in hell
and on
your birthday
god goes to sleep every morning knowing adam and eve were the same person. god is waiting to die. we bite the child, or we don’t. our grief a prop of the churchgoer’s improv. our emptiness made of wax.
kingsoftrain 