Skip to content
April 7, 2018 / barton smock

response musics

what nostalgia is to angel, eyesore is to animal

most mothers
hate
being filmed

there is the way I hold my son
& there is
the way I hold my son
while running
in place

tornado means
I am touched
in a house
with no
basement

wherever it is your father goes
the postcards
there
are small

oh to see jesus
walk at all

April 6, 2018 / barton smock

{near, some}

FIRST / SOME RECENT POEMS

~

[musics, other]

(the spiritual
nudes
of a mother’s
bomb squad)

ghost of no

/ a longer

you

~

[errata musics]

the hand
is a thing
unfinished / the father

is a father
urinating / to feel / followed / it is all

so bare / a barber

is never
missing

~

[ain’t musics]

this story again
my flat
brother
on his bike
with baby possums
eight of them
under his ballcap-

the mothered vehicle
of home, the doubled
kindness
of road
and kill-

how taken
from heaven
we lived

~

[sibling musics]

a found grief in these eggs that scar the pan

moon
gives mom
a toothache

if you can, bed hunger.

that sleepy
mirror…

not news
to your double
my death

~

[musics]

a tongueless form eats from the psalm of your shape. I say birth

you say
assault. we are code

maybe
for embed. our mother pawns

the paw
in her stomach

hoping to afford an impression
of the hand
that created
hands.

I have prayed to a cautious god.

~

SECOND / SOME THINGS @ {isacoustic*}

i.

Jessica Dawson, one of our recent contributors, whose poems, so easily, ask…is having a hard time asking. Please, if you can, check out the below gofundme, and give or share or write a note to self.

https://www.gofundme.com/hmcfd6-just-need-a-little-help

Jessica’s poems will appear in volume third of {isacoustic*}, and are here:

https://isacoustic.com/2018/03/21/person-jessica-dawson-three-poems/

ii.

recent contributors to isacoustic*:

Lana Bella
https://isacoustic.com/2018/04/06/person-lana-bella-two-poems/

G.B. Ryan
https://isacoustic.com/2018/04/06/person-g-b-ryan-one-poem/

iii.

my wording, insufficient, but these things say it correctly:

dark acre by Canese Jarboe:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/04/04/dark-acre-poems-canese-jarboe/

patient. by Bettina Judd:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/03/29/patient-poems-bettina-judd/

VOID SETS by Michelle Gottschlich:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/03/24/void-sets-poems-michelle-gottschlich/

Inquisition by Kazim Ali:
https://isacoustic.com/2018/03/19/inquisition-poems-kazim-ali/

Third-Millennium Heart,by Ursula Andkjær Olsen, translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen:

Third-Millennium Heart – poetry – Ursula Andkjær Olsen, translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen

Adrenalin by Ghayath Almadhoun, translated by Catherine Cobham:

Adrenalin – poetry – Ghayath Almadhoun

One Throne by Rae Hoffman Jager:

One Throne – poems – Rae Hoffman Jager

hooked through by Sara Moore Wagner:

hooked through – poems – Sara Moore Wagner

Saudade by Traci Brimhall:

Saudade – Traci Brimhall

Indictus by Natalie Eilbert:

Indictus – poems – Natalie Eilbert

Two Towns Over by Darren C. Demaree:

Two Towns Over – poems – Darren C. Demaree

Portrait of a Body in Wreckages by Meghan McClure:

Portrait of a Body in Wreckages – prose- Meghan McClure

April 5, 2018 / barton smock

son musics (ii)

for Jill

I’ve said it before
that you were born
when your body
came for you
I am out
of wonder
how
does another
beast
tell
mama
beast
the story
of its
yesterday
not even
the garden
stayed
in the garden
/ today
I peeled an orange
beside
my son’s
ear- skin, I said

fruit
I didn’t (& the healthy

they pondered
their banishment

April 5, 2018 / barton smock

removal musics (viii)

mouth
in memoriam, this baby

unable
to kneel, I can’t say

it is crying, it misses

milk
and misses
hearing
its unpracticed
grief, its god

is asking

who can lose
the same
thumb
twice, oh

tv

or somewhere
to leave
a lamb

April 4, 2018 / barton smock

removal musics (vii)

for every fish he kills, his future lover eats a piece of chalk. it’s mealtime & I hate my body. your brother preaches outhouse and mousetrap to those whose hands have names- inkling, hosanna. what do parrots

do parrots
grieve

April 4, 2018 / barton smock

{recent @ isacoustic*}

reflection on Canese Jarboe’s dark acre

https://isacoustic.com/2018/04/04/dark-acre-poems-canese-jarboe/

 

/

 

person Robyn Brooks, four poems

https://isacoustic.com/2018/04/04/person-robyn-brooks-four-poems/

April 4, 2018 / barton smock

wrist musics (vii)

i.

who
in my absence
will teach
absence

(you are here)

(because an angel

kept
from god
a former
angel’s
dream

ii.

slang
for slang
who

would your movie
mom

quote (you

are here)

cloud / of a doll / in a finger / nail

iii.

it is only
a drop
of blood / she gets

it anyway / the rolling

pin (you are

iv.

here a fox)

with an egg
for a heart

April 3, 2018 / barton smock

{some notes, isacoustic* volume third}

https://isacoustic.com/2018/04/03/some-notes/

 

April 3, 2018 / barton smock

{own, etc}

thru April 9th, 20% off all print books at Lulu with coupon code of TWENTY18

mine, self-published, are here:

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad

~~~~

some recent:

IDEATIONS

the elderly
our unpraised
orphans
with healed
and self-taught
toys

~~~~

cancer is a pop gun and when I say missing I mean her body was seen by the lonely / her body / was having children but only those / we’d seen / in photos / I mean bus

of a christian
swim team

~~~~

when cooking, mama says she is burning the uniform of the country I was dragged through. she knows better than to come from rib. cheek, maybe. or fishhook.

~~~~

scar to my wound, this man believes in god. the last thing I learn is what I know. Franz Wright’s final book is called The Toy Throne. I understand this man when he says he was born with a disabled child. what is lightning

to a fish

~~~~

faith a shoelace in an unbroken egg

I stare at the letter x

~~~~

the plate

in god’s head
is a writer’s
dream. she crows

her three
words
for stoplight
as a doll

bites down
on a stick…

math is maybe not the best look for grief

and hunger

too academic

~~~~

after suicide, everything that happens is the past

~~~~

I am not a ghost,

hand
I use
the least

~~~~

the mothers they were rehearsing in the drive-thru
the sex talk for boys they thought
were still
alive

crush a white tick / you’ll become / a projectionist

sleep is a bleeding stopped by the eye

~~~~

with god
prepared
to remove
its white
stomach, the dream

sees brain
as the print
of its thumbless
hand

~~~~

/ to a breathing machine in a swimming pool

the angel says whale

/ my nightmare

has a whale. it takes grief

from a mule

/ my brothers are porn

and star. claustrophobes

haunting
the hard
to forgive

~~~

alone in that no-name church of dream

scales of grief
and thrown back
fish

April 3, 2018 / barton smock

{newly, isacoustic*}

Danielle Hanson

https://isacoustic.com/2018/04/02/person-danielle-hanson-three-poems/

 

/

 

Sarah Sarai

https://isacoustic.com/2018/04/03/700/