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March 31, 2017 / barton smock

annihilatives

dream: a contortionist on a stretcher

bulimics
at a tortoise
crossing

March 30, 2017 / barton smock

annihilatives

as drawn, the boy’s
alien and cow
evoke rescue

dream: a toothless sheepdog is spooning roadkill in a wax museum dedicated to famine

go on, birth
take silence
from a baby

March 29, 2017 / barton smock

dying at home

bring little, for I am a small room.

my clothes are yours and have always been lonely.

from nowhere
came beauty
to avoid
god.

bruise, ye
from nightgown
to blanket.

be kind, history

to those
in my dream.

March 29, 2017 / barton smock

{cirque}

Free mail shipping on all print books at Lulu today with coupon code of FREEMAIL17

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my most recent self-publications are:

{name calling} poems, March 2017
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/name-calling/paperback/product-23117082.html

{surprise for me a crow} poems, January 2017
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/surprise-for-me-a-crow/paperback/product-23034353.html

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all of my available self-publications are here:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad

*as always, will send free PDFs to anyone requesting and/or free hard copies to anyone interested in writing a review, requests can be made to me at bartonsmock@yahoo.com

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also, through the end of March, I have free copies of a privately self-published chapbook called {BASILISK} that can be requested via message sent to me at bartonsmock@yahoo.com

March 29, 2017 / barton smock

bornography

it is common for the male cannibal to carry the skin of the due child

fasting is a sin and starvation a commandment

orphans are given home movies and edible pillows

language is a head
we bring it cake

March 28, 2017 / barton smock

ribbon on a blindfold

suicide
is death’s
unicorn

March 28, 2017 / barton smock

lording

she puts down the book once it begins to read like it remembers being written. it’s my book. do you know this man? his sight returned while he ate. boys play freeze tag to sadden birds.

March 27, 2017 / barton smock

committal

leafing through the milkman’s picture-book of outhouse graveyards

happy to taste the gum on the buried shoe

reverie a learned behavior

god a tornado warning and hearing
a ghost town, this

a cigarette from the purse
of a past

/ mother

March 27, 2017 / barton smock

{targeted}

poems from my most recent self-published collection {name calling}:

~

[boy with bible]

scissor his hair
with fingers
from the hand
of your longer
arm

picture him
as a hardscrabble
mystic

gay

/ the frog shepherd

~

[entries for loss]

can we stop this talk of the baby cut in half and ask why this town has two graveyards. show me a dog showing an angel where to dig. the brothers have all gone underwater to raise money for hand signals and the sisters have taken from a tale of snowfall an orgasm to amnesia’s headstone. the parts of the movie you look at

vanish. it’s my fault there’s a god.

~

[entries for yield]

in laundromat
my stomach
moves
my bed

my blood wears a blue sock

and a fly goes down on melancholy’s crossword

my sister is here to have gum in her hair
and hair
in her mouth

tooth is the ghost beak is not

mom makes us wear most of it home

the animal’s first time as something else

~

[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

~

[entries for water]

seasons by the look and smell of him being beaten.

a hole in a fingerprint. doll overboard.

~

[a letter, silent]

a letter, silent

dropped by a word
into window’s
bible

cot, diving board, empty pool. southernmost

search

for earpiece.

medusa

her headless
horseman

/

note:

25% off today on all print books at Lulu with coupon code of LULU25

{name calling} is here:

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

March 27, 2017 / barton smock

viands

no person was made in the harming of this creature.

hands off, angel,
the baby’s
glove.