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April 19, 2025 / barton smock

sacrifice,

sacrifice 7

I want all hounds to sleep through their death. I hate grief, but not for the reason you think. I am less weird.
April 19, 2025 / barton smock

I grew my teeth in golden meat

Look at what god was given. What did you do with your last silence. You sharpened yourself in a whale and let your baby die in an owl. Yourself has no world in this place. None of my cousins are dead but I'll never see them again. My sickest son has no hell. Have no hell.
April 18, 2025 / barton smock

sacrifice,

sacrifice 6

we look all the time at dying and call it stargazing then while whale watching someone says you know alcohol disrupts your sleep
April 17, 2025 / barton smock

sacrifice,

sacrifice 5

I’ve been trying to leave heaven but my body tastes like a photo I took in Baltimore Ohio of a groundhog’s skull
and my blood is still in the bowl of a dog sleeping on earth.

Before death dies does it see every lived thing

I’m in the accident
but I’m in the car first

It’s hard when your parents know there’s a god.
Babies think other babies are screaming.

Any last silence
April 16, 2025 / barton smock

sacrifice,

sacrifice 4

If you love your children for too long, they become lonely. Remembering everything is not enough. Update your isolations.
April 15, 2025 / barton smock

sacrifice,

sacrifice 3

God
a mere
flare
Creation’s
signal
to Eden
of a typo
in its dark
message
Leave
under a corpse
of light no
cried out
thing
April 15, 2025 / barton smock

sacrifice,

sacrifice 2

Two dreams: I was crying in a horse about death. The horse had branches for bones and had never been awake. I was in the horse because Jesus had seen my wrists. Suicide gets a stickman into heaven. A mother keeps earaches in her palm.
April 15, 2025 / barton smock

Ethel Cain letter 23, 041525

Letter 041525

Dear Ethel Cain

I might be dying. It is rude to care for oneself when your kids make from children bombs that bomb. It’s not hard to be drunk. My blue mother lives on motherhood while worshiping in miniature the sleep of the lonely bear bought by our most eccentric celebrity. I’m not okay. I have to drive to work when at home my son is sick and my other sons aren’t. If I die, people will stop looking at me right away. My brothers aren’t on their knees with this. Dear star my abusers used puppies to touch my blood in black and white. You can’t deport a witch. A miracle. My nakedness shrinks death with a folk song about angels protesting permanence. The lie reached heaven and that dude set himself on fire to burn god with Palestine. Jesus rose but the rest kept their graves on earth. The minotaur fell out of love with a horse. Lightning left the moon to think on thunder. Lightning left the moon to think on thunder.
April 14, 2025 / barton smock

sacrifice,

sacrifice 1

Heaven lasts as long as the dreams you show up in on earth. Dying is the insufficient décor of an offscreen world. Mary had a stalker.
April 12, 2025 / barton smock

consumptions and communions

When found by my children, I am the most lost of all fathers. Sex sounds like crying to someone crying. I want to drink with nothing in my stomach and talk to no one about art. I still have only five words for what my hands can do. In Ohio, either the box is the church or the pup is the church. In Ohio, animals think fire is the last supper of the afterlife. Look, I tire of both angel and ghost but of angel first. Younger I thought the bible had been written by my uncles. The fish is holy and the bread boring and unending. Caress the scales downward. By my uncles against their will.