kingsoftrain

some kindness, in allowing me to write this here:

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

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.