the clock’s grandfathered amnesia, this thing I did, that someone saw enough to say.
book has a new link:
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++++How do we face a world where our experiences and their impacts do not hold the necessary weight? Having read the poetry of Barton Smock for a few years now, this is a question I find myself repeating each time I return to his works. My own poetry has been shaped by experience and the shapes that response takes, so when I discovered Barton’s work, I was (selfishly) most interested in discovering someone speaking in the same language. Barton is a poet who self-publishes several collections a year. The subject matter seems to press itself into the fabric of daily life in the same way as time itself- creating a space that keeps moving away against our will. I understand this, and appreciate the dedication it takes to keep up the momentum that allows for such expulsion of energy through language. Seeking a way out of the mind to…
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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.
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
means, today:
the weight of a wheelchair / no bush on fire
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~~~~
some recent writings:
[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
~
[bee pain]
all of your mother’s paintings have two names. father with cigarette or jesus
meet ghost.
–
four pounds / of my birth / were missing
~
[bee pain]
a pregnancy, a grief, a photographer
of rapture themed fashion shows…
this increase
in childhood. her wolf
raised
by astronauts
/ 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
RETURNING
god’s brain in a small hat
–
(rabbit)
–
from surgeries
and gardens
–
a crownless mouth
~~~~
my angel is a scarecrow in a sleeping bag. heaven a movie theater in spain. she walks that way because she is trying to step on her blood. the boy at the gate is lost and must choose either frankenstein’s childhood or a more diverse nostalgia. orphans on earth smell like bread.
~~~~
there are pictures of me sleeping that are responsible for my brother cheating on his diet. apples the shape of going home. sex addicts fighting to direct a musical about the number of people disappearing
to let death
mourn. there is a chair in an open field. a throbbing in the palm of sound’s publisher. a kid under a blanket asking god
when did she know
what perfection
was. a mouth that was a bomb
/ before I had teeth
~~~~
with sound
the second language
of absence, with
mother, bible, bee
(I am trying to memorize missing you
~~~~
god as a girl reading her father’s fanfiction
fixing her mother’s
ghost town
water fountain, then god as a boy
tired, in a dream
~~~~
you think we are the same.
your unlearn, my re-know.
our place wants the person I’m from.
church
of the removed
stitch. what I would bite
to have your mouth.
~~~~
in the history of newborns
not one is named
shelter, and we’ve called
only two
attraction…
my dream priest
dies
in the desert
after making
with death
a movie, no…
the blood’s
search
for brain
~~~~
they took
the body
lamb
stayed with star
~~~~
you can train
a bird
but not
a fish
to care
for a thumb…
fire is the skin of god
~~~~
a father
at peace
with how many times
his hair
has died
is standing
in a museum
before the shell
of a giant
turtle
his infant’s mouth
has gone home
to lose
its shape
he is alone
like any
grocery cart
some
cribs
~~~~
all information
new
your abuser
could’ve joined
the circus
his chewing gum
the age
of your mouth
~~~~
when drinking, I think maybe in a past life I also drank.
sorry, poem. absent
your suicide
hypotheticals
we all
speak silence
~~~~
I never heard my father cough
I must
to say so
be dying
insect is a thing
cannot be
surrounded
the rich have their ghosts and the angels
their seaweed
~~~~
I exist / too / often
(it’s okay)
his father
had a beekeeper’s
wave
the recurring dream of my blood
is loss. dear ma,
your book
how to appear
edible
to a thoughtless
creature…
I don’t know. birth is whose
burned
hand
~~~~
death in its dream home
had a psalmic
memory
to rival
odd-numbered
women. hell was empty
and we wrote
what words
believed
~~~~
is it written or is it said that the word tells you its language?
I built my house around a crying baby.
–
Q: sister spotlight has a brother
A: whose blood is a stop sign
~~~~
long gone are the insects
you forgave
this storm, the whale
of oblivion’s
white feast, this moon
the word
moon
~~~~
childish nicknames for the messiah
these desperate meditations
on the ghost
of a sober
twin
I am not death but enter
like it
the church
of so many
canceled
spelling bees
to ask
whose punishment
for being born
am I
~~~~
father is sitting in that snowplow like he’s seen every baby and mother is mock burying herself as if daring the holy spirit to make a fist
and sister wants to weep
for an eyelid or hear
a helicopter
and the heart has too many ghosts
~~~~
I go places
in my ghost
that are children
when I arrive. they call me
high grass, lord
of the wind’s
blood. most of them
have lost
babies
with dog
names
to birth
or touch, our brief
attractions
to déjà vu
~~~~
the father is a shepherd in a hall of mirrors. the son a man on all fours salvaging a puzzle mothers use to predict snowfall. we have goats but they act like goats that deep down know they’ve been imagined. the daughter is a hallucination color prays to.
the goldfish a marble from the psalm of dry lamb.
~~~~
in this dream, the father stops halfway up the ladder and blows on his hands. starvation is a drowsy snake. the dream has time to think and figures existence needs a distraction. when my son bites himself, it is because his teeth are feeling lost. I offer him to the dream but he is not godless enough to throw his voice. are you sick in a language that has a word for what you have? skin is the longest dream.
thru January 22nd, 15% off all print books at Lulu with coupon code of JAN15
mine, self-published, are here:
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~
NEW at isacoustic*:
Darren C Demaree
…all that
yellow we code-named
“bird-watching” – {from} EMILY AS WE, SPARINGLY
/
Eleanor Gray
hunger has taken the shape of a coyote, crossing the white field
in this dream, the father stops halfway up the ladder and blows on his hands. starvation is a drowsy snake. the dream has time to think and figures existence needs a distraction. when my son bites himself, it is because his teeth are feeling lost. I offer him to the dream but he is not godless enough to throw his voice. are you sick in a language that has a word for what you have? skin is the longest dream.
kingsoftrain 