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June 7, 2017 / barton smock

{dome}

still have two privately self-published chapbooks {BASILISK; the accepted field} available in hard copy and free to anyone making said request to bartonsmock@yahoo.com

~

most recent full-length collections:

{name calling}

9.00, 110 pages, published March 2017

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/name-calling/paperback/product-23117082.html

~

{paw five}

9.00, 130 pages, published May 2017

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/paw-five/paperback/product-23198602.html

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a poem from {name calling}:

[the boy-sleep of his hands]

/ a pair of scissors in one room or a gun in two. a thumb war’s lame spider. four rootless prayers drawn on an echo. four awestruck sisters caressing with their ears the undeveloped skull of an infant. melancholy’s condoms. flowers for the arm-wrestler’s inoculated phantom.

~

two poems from {paw five}:

[ballerina]

dog whistle, nothing’s church-bell:

my mother, handcuffed
still worships
wasp

~

[mothers, acoustic]

we are maybe
inside
an Ohio
factory

childless and ready

for a refresher
on orphan
etiquette-

word is
there came
a cow
from the nothingness
that drank
nowhere’s
father

and sleep
is death’s
babysitter

June 6, 2017 / barton smock

archetype

we put your favorite chair in your favorite place to stand. you are still as human as the suppression of appetite. people drift in and out of weird dogs that your brothers call grief and your sister the aliens that remember god.

June 6, 2017 / barton smock

{irenic}

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

my most recent self-published {paw five} is here:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/paw-five/paperback/product-23198602.html

~

some recent poems:

[contact]

mouth, scene one. a rocking horse drinks from a toilet. there is a ghost in the basement. a girl is circling the neighborhood in the car she was hit by. her skateboard misses one shoe more than the other. it seems to her that maybe far away a fetus is fixing its hair. she is not the focus.

~

[some near thing]

it’s late. my kids laugh in a dirty kitchen. I am in the hallway having just killed a wasp for looking like hunger. the wasp is in my hand. I can’t move. the boy who touched all the eggs.

~

[the poor don’t get amnesia]

snake was made
from the bones
of a circle

~

[toys made in human silence]

the rock thrown by an only child. the wasp the seashell of a mother’s desert. the zookeeper’s raft.

~

[atomy]

the white doghouse. the closed drive-in. the animal we shared to avoid miracle. our empty child

mostly
from books.

~

[fish from scratch]

I wasn’t born and then I wasn’t born sad. old phones are the stuff of male nightmares.

~

[spectacle]

we pray to the being god meant to rob

June 6, 2017 / barton smock

at peace

daughter leaves behind her short films on separation anxiety. the baby likes all three of its cribs. I return again to the last thing god made. what being can death thank for the memories?

June 5, 2017 / barton smock

goat season

brother kicks a turtle
down track
and trains
take only
deer

June 4, 2017 / barton smock

church fragments

and you will have a son
with a perfect mouth
and he will tell
the bomb
there’s nothing
left

I blame god because I believe in blame

the wisemen
call this
astronomy
for hunchbacks

June 2, 2017 / barton smock

{fifth}

am making 10 copies of my newest publication {paw five} available for free with request made to bartonsmock@yahoo.com

book is available below, and the book preview on site is the book entire:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/paw-five/paperback/product-23198602.html

~

some poems from the collection:

[the rapture]

grief is grief because it attempts to mourn the infinite. my leg’s blood becomes a branch. I breathe and think I’m eating.

~

[annihilatives]

the present happens at different times. fetus, comma, tadpole. surgery, please tell this mask

my face went down on nothingness.

~

[childhood (i)]

the body of jesus
pulled from the sea

June 2, 2017 / barton smock

cattle

father won’t say sea. there’s land
and there’s land
underwater. troll

eats architect. in a field.

June 2, 2017 / barton smock

balm

for Jon Cone

what am I / but unaware / as an echo / now / in my knowing / of this small / passage / he’s written

how god
upon seeing
man
said none
shall recall
his beauty

June 1, 2017 / barton smock

emotives

it entered the burning house to ask each boy what it should take. chinrest. mirror.

time to think.