not a fish
here
can go
missing
we ran around the empty crib. I let him catch a breath and he let me kneel. we tiptoed past private make-up to which his mother had been softly applied. he drank tea from an eggshell and I declined. I swatted him to let him know I was dying. his bent sister fell asleep and the boy was kind enough to believe her hair was a nightgown. I swatted him again to let him know I would live. the tea was gone. the rest is sadness.
reblogging as Lulu is offering 15% off all print books today with coupon code of LULU15
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 collection:
name calling
9.00
110 pages
published March 2017
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/name-calling/paperback/product-23117082.html
~
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.
~
readings:
the disappeared inventor of the present
her reflection
in surprised
water
imagined
while losing
loss
a dolphin
the shyest
mourner
witch
in a swimsuit
the building we enter to worship the church.
stones of boated nights.
a somehow
seasick
deer.
I have for appetite a pair of scissors and for despair a silent vase. I have a louse like a flower and a crush on a doll. I take my meals with a three-shouldered angel. the head of my abstract dog is highchair real. food is a ghost. I rake the hair.
far be it from me
to stir
the madness
of fish.
age allows that we are younger for god.
sleep
is a shadow’s
bookmark.
it is always a neighbor of ours tries to schedule amnesia and gets put down for suicide. it is always me on a farm machine hasn’t moved in years writing a poem for mom. it is never a mediocre ventriloquist marries a better.
kingsoftrain 