ISACOUSTIC*
please check out the work of Jon Cone, first contributor to {isacoustic*}: https://isacoustic.wordpress.com/2017/11/15/person-jon-cone-four-poems/
{isacoustic*} is a small place of mine and of some others, and is also somewhat yours. poems and poetry reviews and other misc.
guidance:
submit no less than [3] and no more than [7] poems to: isacousticsubmissions@gmail.com / /poems can be in the body of the email or attached as PDF, doc, docx / include a brief and non-clever bio
in order to be published, [3] of the poems in the submission must be selected by the editors / /all three poems will be published in one post / postings will occur weekly or bi-weekly
payment for a selected submission is 15.00 (5.00 per poem) / payment will be made within one month of the posting / previously published and simultaneous submissions are okay
every three months, the editors will self-publish a journal of the poems posted in those months. contributors will receive a copy.
what the editors are looking for: image-based absence. structurally sound offhandedness. clarity, yes, but not necessarily reliable. purpose.
donations to the journal can be made here: https://www.paypal.me/BartonSmock (if one places the name of a contributor in the payment notes, money will be sent to said contributor)
~
OTHER NOTES
Lulu is offering 15% off all print books today through November 23rd with coupon code of LULU15
my most recent self-published work, {L A I T Y}, is there, here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/l-a-i-t-y/paperback/product-23332280.html
I also have private publications available via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or https://www.paypal.me/BartonSmock, as such, below:
chapbook, BASILISK, 64 pages $5.00
(Feb 2017)
chapbook, the accepted field, 84 pages $5.00
(May 2017)
chapbook, in this life another is you, 64 pages $3.00
(Oct 2017)
full length, so sang, 210 pages $8.00
(Oct 2017)
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RECENT POEM(S) and/or ERRORS
[SOFT FACTS]
we peck
in the darkroom
at the wrist
of a fish
our body language
proofing
the baby’s
dream
*****
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
*****
at a time
unlike this
the father
is all
appetite
the chicken, gone
he points
to its ghost…
–
my mouth
is a church, my clock
a Sunday spider
in a dry
toilet
–
(I’m passionate about my grief)
your shadow
dolled up
in the yard
–
cyborg, minotaur
not once
did I watch
them sleep
*****
I don’t know what she saw
in that jar
but she’s been hours
rubbing
my head
with a balloon…
dad switches out the bag on her head
and slips something in my mouth
while saying
mouse
in the dollhouse
I doze for a moment and see a priest
pretend to fall
from a horse, and a stork
act
as it should
I see myself
a form
forged
by a twin, a reincarnation
that perhaps impressed
my photographer
son
*****
pills
minus the pills
given
by shepherd
*****
the cause of this grief escapes me and I worry can tunnel breathe. the snake in your love letter sounds real. it takes my belly to things
that are also
*****
dream is a boy dressed as his abuser sizing aquariums for the hand of a spider
*****
the first person to use these steps went down these steps. violence is the new past. I see a dove and think god will never know who it was ate his crushed light bulb. I betray my ear. the seashell of the stomach.
*****
I try, but can’t make my bed. mom says maybe I’m grief. after coming back to touch me, she wishes herself a bird.
I hope she eats.
–
then
I had a word for marble that wasn’t marble. both were swallowed.
–
thirst is not the same as forgetting to drink. god talks up his handicapped friend.
*****
what
will I never
see
lost
arachnid, a triangle
drawn
by others-
my legs make me lonely.
dream, put me down.
*****
upon my double
being seen
I am set
to self
destruct
I am no sadder
than twin, no sadder
than dog…
my wrist
is nothing’s
neck
*****
no knife in the dog of absence. not a scratch on wind’s throat. winged things that belong to the tooth in your shoulder. lipstick. the unhummed ribs of your wrist.
*****
night is the sound of my father’s adding machine. of mother narrating the life of a stone. lake is my brother’s action figure learning to swim on a full stomach. lake is a bird going from dream to dream as a mouse. hole is anything I bring home that isn’t my body. home from the city where sisters drink in silence to footnotes of future fictions.
*****
life is a shapelessness to which form describes its pilgrimage
dream a grave dreaming
of a cactus
for nothing’s
crow
*****
shape is a future fashioned from god’s inability to reflect
–
(she thinks her hair came from an egg. she is not alone.)
–
there’s nothing in the food
*****
and there I was, sad
my robot
giving hell
to an elevator
and I was forty-one
and still not there
the day that kid
got beat up
for keeping sadness
close
and I was never the poorest
in any room
is this what being poor means or meant
grief
that we can brush at the fossil
of grief
*****
suicide took the person she was named during.
I am old, here. a klutz abstaining from revelation.
bald as any
lover
of maps.
*****
had he not been all those years
writing a review
for the last book
in the world
my father
would’ve been
a poet
there are only so many crows
one can see
outside a laundromat
for the drowned, scarless hawks
so maternally nudged
into the travelogue
of my staying
*****
angel of the old well
speaks to god
in rabbit, I wish
jack-in-the-box
your films
were longer
*****
I don’t know the name of the animal that slept with god. that ate the pea and left a rib. that moved the angel’s grave. with help.
kingsoftrain 