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October 24, 2017 / barton smock

{ever}

thru October 26th, Lulu is offering 25% off all print books with coupon code of LULU25

my available self-published works on Lulu are here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad

through the end of October, any monies I receive from the sales of these self-published books will be sent to a poet friend of mine who was injured while clearing debris for others after Hurricane Irma.

ALSO, any monies I receive for the below private publications will be added to and for same.

*private publications are available via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or https://www.paypal.me/BartonSmock, as such:

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)

October 24, 2017 / barton smock

dream tells me it is because I miss pianos

dream tells me
it is because
I miss
pianos
that I follow
a specific
cow
through nondescript
neighborhoods
none
abandon / dream

does not tell me
which half
of hide and seek
you were
when baby

October 23, 2017 / barton smock

untitled

we are brave
because
one at a time
we are brave
but the mother
hamster
eats her young…

these mouths
age
in a dreamless
noise

October 22, 2017 / barton smock

untitled

heaven wasn’t called heaven until it was full. we are made of water and there’s glass between us. when my son is asked to rate his pain he says his blood feels like a feather. I sleep at the foot of his bed often, a crooked something, a melancholy numeral…

his body- I don’t know. it repeats what most are made to recite. my brother has a ghost can see cats.

October 22, 2017 / barton smock

untitled

for Kaveh Akbar

all this time, ghost, we’ve been writing about the wrong body. poems talk of me like I’m here. nostalgia adrift on an oyster boat. empty acne on the face of god.

October 21, 2017 / barton smock

soul

warn a crow
you’ll forget
your past

October 21, 2017 / barton smock

drill

imagine having to haunt doom. sole cornstalk in the dreamworlds of tree. I cannot track the beauty of my children. it’s as if they are egging the model airplane of a pilot who loves matches, declawed cats, and wax museums. imagine chickens. leaving the anthill.

October 20, 2017 / barton smock

windowsill

I believe my mother when she says we are here to forget the girl god was trying to impress. that we are to follow starvation to its wrongly named foods. that breads are condemned

birds. scissors the writer’s churchbell.

October 20, 2017 / barton smock

exhibit

grief in the near future

(practicing)

safe
grief

October 20, 2017 / barton smock

{vocab}

10% off all print books AND free mail shipping (or 50% off ground shipping) today at Lulu with coupon code of BOOKSHIP17

through the end of October, any monies I receive from the sales of my self-published books on Lulu will be sent to a poet friend of mine who was injured while clearing debris for others after Hurricane Irma.

available books are here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/l-a-i-t-y/paperback/product-23332280.html

also, any monies I receive for the below private publications will be added to and for same.

private publications are available via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or https://www.paypal.me/BartonSmock, as such:

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)

some recent poems:

[ultimata]

how am I not a dream? I am not a place. I can’t say rabbit but can robot. my god knows one story. those I count when I’m sad are those I count when happy. grandfather means pipe-smoke and grandmother an outdoor pool. their daughter is a lamb-haunted horse. I see Ohio as an ear but still I ask what happened to the ear in question. I don’t sleep unless I need proof I never. I am older than the brothers I scare. travel is my sister’s vehicle. my dog is chewing on a rubber hand. it can’t be dark in both.

~

[desire, footnote]

drunk above a son I cannot feed, I don’t long to swim

but do
to have my mother’s hair
combed
by a horse-

birth
oh when
was I tamed

~

[surgery, age eight]

these names, before you were born. colorblind orphan, yawnless fish. ghost with calendar.

look at me
when I’m invisible

~

[notes for insect]

I will never know a ghost story

god does not

~

[my quiet quiet son]

“Probably I’ll die like this,
a long time ago.” – Franz Wright

I will never forget hearing god pronounce your name
to a ghost obsessed with wolves

out there in the dogness

~

[a growth hormone for phantom limbs]

not roadkill
what crawls
from a costume

~

[pig rain]

a cigarette burn and the time it tells once. gum in the puppet’s hair.

blind date
with birth.