kingsoftrain

thru November 27th, Lulu is offering 40% off all print books with coupon code of CYBER40

my newest is:

{everything I touch remembers being my hand} / poems
172 pages, 9.00

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/everything-i-touch-remembers-being-my-hand/paperback/product-23423003.html

/ as always, will send free PDF of the work to anyone requesting. also free hard copy to anyone interested in writing a review. such requests can be made to bartonsmock@yahoo.com

// book preview on site is book in its entirety

/

selections from {everything I touch remembers being my hand}

[from ~ we brought home the wrong dying baby ~]

I ain’t been talked to in so long my wife’s kid thinks I have amnesia. ain’t been touched since Ohio’s ramshackle symbolism swallowed up some organ donor’s shadow. I went yesterday to a funeral for a woman’s ear. told people what I was wearing was a bedsheet belonged to the man in the moon. told myself I had this microscope could see a ghost and that I’ve only ever lost an empty house. I don’t know how old I am but I know what year I want it to be. before dying I saw it flash how I should have died. low creature. tugboat.

~~~

father an optometrist inspecting a replica of a totem pole and mother an eel collapsing at the thought of a play performed in a stone.

and there, at the bottom of grief, a cup of dirt with nothing to bury.

/

[from ~ in this life another is you ~]

water, make your fist. hold your breath
in a single
fish.

/

[from ~ food ~]

how to bathe
a red chameleon
from the childhood
of Moses

~~~

books to step on, scarecrows

to kiss.

animal
a thing left speechless.

night
a lost
suitcase.

the apple, the quiet. brother’s

double
nodding off
on library’s
secret
horse.

door songs.

mother, mother, father-

/

[from ~ soft facts ~]

body

like some use an alias. fingerprints

manna
for hand.

–

I was dreaming I guess
in the face of brevity

–

of god’s glassrabbit ocean

/

also, please check out and consider submitting to {isacoustic*}, here: https://isacoustic.wordpress.com/

work on site so far:

four poems by person Adam Hughes:

person Adam Hughes, four poems

four poems by person Jon Cone:

person Jon Cone, four poems

*** also on site are reviews by myself of books by Sarah Marcus, Ruth Awad, Darren C Demaree, and Kaveh Akbar