he knows
it should flower
but he was born
open, what
is he saying, I
can’t call
every bomb
my mother
as one might misplace
the remains
of a non
muscular
child, there is
in the spiritual ache
of a gas station
a form
reshaped
by the work
of its leaving
god
a souvenir
of man’s
absence, brain
a sick
star, my blood
covered
blood
god as the complete
thought
I shared
with death…
skull
short
for squirrel
and poem looked to me like the eyesight that stayed behind. claw and wing were the oars of my father’s blank craft. every boy in Ohio was a girl in a bookstore caring for the latest creature of a flat god. sadness hadn’t yet moved on from its stick figures and mothers were still blowing into perfectly round balloons. pale dog drank from a paint can. color could see, and see only, the future. a pinkness left my brother for the wrong kind of milk. sister had been hugging those angels
couldn’t bend their arms. zero
(that wizard
of the non
event)
was buying up land.
her eyes
loot
the imagination
unfortunately, still true
through December 11th, Lulu is offering 15% off all print books with coupon code of LULU15
my newest everything I touch remembers being my hand is here:
(book preview on site is book entire / free PDF to anyone requesting / free hard copy to anyone interested in writing a review ~ contact bartonsmock@yahoo.com)
~
I also do a partial and pretty horrifying reading of the work, here:
recovery is a prison run by fish.
light’s one song-
the past is bleeding
