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July 25, 2017 / barton smock

you were born the day your body came for you

photograph
what you cannot
lift

July 25, 2017 / barton smock

{downing}

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

~

recent self published books:

[the boy who touched all the eggs]
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-boy-who-touched-all-the-eggs/paperback/product-23225174.html

[depictions of reentry]
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/depictions-of-reentry/paperback/product-22812020.html

~

recent readings both lonely and badly lit:

6.27.17
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/depictions-of-reentry/paperback/product-22812020.html

11.4.16
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=LzHCJHzPvrc

~

some poems:

[entries for transformation]

i.

is there blood in something born outside,

a history that works in one ear?

ii.

time touches nothing. is the sex of my bruise

/ a scar

~

[somebody kiss]

place a wet diaper on a skateboard and send the skateboard across a non-busy street. we call this summer. the older kids arrange on a stretcher the pieces of a woman’s bathing suit. the older kids come for the skateboard. our tortured turtle is bad with names. the tractor has yet to reach the deer. this is also summer. the orphan keeps two diaries.

~

[boy and breath]

as a stick figure on a forgotten gurney dreams of one day washing a flower or of drying a wet bird, I run the bath to put the tub to sleep then use my body to bury the water.

~

[entries for footprint]

mom is talking to her wounds. dear baby I don’t have to carry. dear purse I don’t have to fill. her dolls draw blood and her animals say goodbye. there’s no substitute for loneliness. memory knows more than what happened. dad is an oil slick seducing a satellite. his dolls eat pillows.

~

[hex]

it reads and feels nothing. a reminder’s footnote.

memory forgets its hermit father

& painters
go bald.

a mother says little.

each cigarette
has its own
language, this match

the pen
of the afterlife.

give prognosis its non-crying baby.

~

*also, said some things, recently, here:

http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/write-poetry-barton-smock

July 24, 2017 / barton smock

akin

just born and his bones go south. cigarette, first-aid, airport. off-brand invisible ink: a memoir. I want knowledge to be sadness. cassettes went away because we stopped recording god.

July 23, 2017 / barton smock

his body a small sorrow

the proofreader
of grief

July 23, 2017 / barton smock

impact

as for the tree’s supposed headache, I don’t want to give it teeth.

your twin has tried to leave a dream.

July 21, 2017 / barton smock

story

on the shell of my brother’s first turtle

the inscription

campfire
at the end
of the world

July 19, 2017 / barton smock

white movie

death’s dog wouldn’t kill a pony
says the man only men can hear.

repeat after me
says the baby.
nothing’s publicist.

July 18, 2017 / barton smock

{sometimes careful}

some kindness, in allowing me to write this here:

http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/write-poetry-barton-smock

July 18, 2017 / barton smock

untitled

I vandalize the outside of a church in a city designed by men with bad teeth and there I mistake a drop of blood for a penny and begin to last forever

July 18, 2017 / barton smock

{lefty}

15% off all print books today on Lulu with coupon code of LULU15

some recent self-publications:

[hick lore rabbit hole], 9.00, 124 pages, published October 2016
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/hick-lore-rabbit-hole/paperback/product-22914385.html

[surprise for me a crow], 8.00, 104 pages, published January 2017
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/surprise-for-me-a-crow/paperback/product-23034353.html

[the boy who touched all the eggs], 11.00, 258 pages, published June 2017
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-boy-who-touched-all-the-eggs/paperback/product-23224033.html

~

some recent poems:

[thirst rag]

mouth a souvenir from the exodus of shapes-

her mom
ate something
blue

[vertices]

a female bodybuilder is yelling at her father for refusing to turn off the mower. a half-naked boy on a bike coasts past them both in the direction of a woman who’s professed to have a snake that’s all ears. I am in a third floor apartment crookedly hugging a window air-conditioner I nightly dream has fallen. my kids are together on a bottom bunk under a blanket stabbing each other with a pair of scissors from the mailman’s last meal. the neighborhood widows lean on separate swing-sets and shape their memories of toy pianos. I can hear it now my brother saying that any and all travel is anti-childhood as he explains to my mother why it is that grief gives god closure over exit to the subconsciously alone.

[survived] for Brian Dawson

I learn early on in the poem
that god can hear an insect
cry. how terrible.

there’s more-

[beheadings]

poverty is nothing more than jesus pouring milk from a soldier’s helmet into the nest of a delirious and elsewhere bird. how long have you had that invisible mirror? I can’t taste blood. fever is my mother’s crown.