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.
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.
grief in the near future
(practicing)
safe
grief
(i)
no one in heaven is named after god.
place is an animal. animal a cure
for déjà vu
(ii)
my hands
are the hands
my hands
could rescue
(iii)
I was wrong. now is not
the afterlife
of the present.
not
yet
(iv)
our towels are asleep in the oven. our surroundings
lonesome.
/ mom severs mother from the nude vocab of our nakedness
~
[accident]
because
when mine
stopped
your sadness
was still
moving
~
[dog years]
the longer
I grieve
the more
~
[dear you]
I am at a word
for loss
~
[nostalgia]
my father
he was in
this poem
yesterday
so deeply
that I-
damn.
they repo
even
dark.
~
[goodbye]
my penchant for last things does not end
I lost you before I lost you. your stickmen were free of anxiety. they left a church to the potbellied ghost of your muscle. their word for tree was branch. what god couldn’t finish they called wind. baby an air that stopped breathing.
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
a brother sleepwalks and beats his sister. daylight, brother looks for her abuser but can’t stay awake long enough to catch the person he doesn’t know he is. sister fears what he may become. I have two children, Object and Permanence. they examine my spotless body
like aliens
who cannot hurt their own but want to.
–
boy has no name
so town
has no name
–
when my younger brother was born, his program made him human. because of this, my mother was thrown in jail. my own program gives me the power to look like anyone I’ve seen. I need you to write down what you look like because it’s me to the rescue.
–
her hand is a ray gun that can only stun babies not yet born. her grief is a time machine that wants to grow old.
–
as they had no memories of being children, mom pretended she had been their mother and told them stories of the funny ways they’d been in trouble.
the below listed publications are not available publicly, and can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or https://www.paypal.me/BartonSmock
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 collection, so sang, 202 pages $8.00
(Oct 2017)
through the end of October, all monies I receive for these, or for any of my publicly available collections, will be sent to a poet friend of mine who was injured while clearing debris for others after Hurricane Irma.
currently, Lulu is offering 15% off all print books with coupon code of LULU15
author spotlight on lulu:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad
all book previews on site are the viewed book in its entirety. will send free PDFs per request. also, all titles will be sent free in hard copy to those interested in writing a review. inquire, request, here: bartonsmock@yahoo.com or bartsmock@gmail.com
kingsoftrain 