/ the baby whose worship returns to put hair on your doll’s chest
/ the time your twin broke stick with a woman at the end of her rope
/ the ring-bearer of silence
speech, the blank
drawn
in paradise…
the parrot, the bone
left
for madness
we know he’s sick. ya body, ya body.
an angel of nonsense, this dying…
god’s
inability
to memorize…
/ I will say to the maker of doors
your mother
gave birth
standing up
an orange cat
touches
the earth, this
my dad’s
dream…
and this, the nail’s:
a palm print
on the hoarder’s
window
the insomniac’s apple tree and a pig paler than its own star
the pinky swearing ghost of my rib
my self-published (on demand) Lulu books are here:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad
** 20% off all print books, there, thru October 3rd with coupon code of SAVETODAY **
latest collections:
[earth is part earth and there’s a hole in the sound I made you from]
9.00
98 pages
published December 2015
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/earth-is-part-earth-and-theres-a-hole-in-the-sound-i-made-you-from/paperback/product-22503167.html
~
[MOON tattoo]
9.00
114 pages
published March 2016
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/moon-tattoo/paperback/product-22621263.html
~
[shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner (& other poems)]
7.00
114 pages
published June 2016
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/shuteye-in-the-land-of-the-sacred-commoner/paperback/product-22744790.html
~
[FOUR]
12.00
340 pages
published June 2016
~ this is a combined publication of these four collections: earth is part earth and there’s a hole in the sound I made you from / MOON tattoo / infant*cinema / shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner [& other poems] ~
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/four/paperback/product-22756947.html
~
[depictions of reentry]
9.00
146 pages
published August 2016
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/depictions-of-reentry/paperback/product-22811652.html
~
speaking of books, and of talking to myself, I said some things about two recent, and excellent, books of poetry:
Nothing Good Ever Happens After Midnight, Sarah Marcus, GTK Press
marshland moon, Eleanor Gray, Dink Press
an animal lost in a little church
a hallucinating buzzard
snow
that light
replaced
the house knows I’ve been sleeping in my car. my son opens an empty fridge. no one in the book has turned on a light. I am dying. I never got to make a habit
of this. I love more
her adopted
clock.
reflections on
marshland moon
poems
eleanor gray
(Dink Press 2016)
order, here:
http://dinkpress.bigcartel.com/product/marshland-moon-by-eleanor-gray
~
“(it is nothing, is nothing
…and so, where fables began)” – from [Lady’s Slipper]
After reading:
if there is no card
the flowers
are
from loss.
I didn’t know how to end things. I threw a soft doll
at a bullet.
I was trying to be quiet
but silence
it has
a safe word.
The way swimming plays with my shadow. The prop
high-chair.
~
During:
The missing child learns a new word. Not from me. Not that I remember. Our favorite program? A previously ruined nostalgia.
“a nameless sensation which perpetually haunts the body” – from [and then, Monsters]
I have a look I want to give loss.
“I want to say goodbye, I want
time to say goodbye” – from [Skeletal, Furred]
In my dreams I am ugly. In my dreams I am not differently awake.
“and so, what then of
colossal sleep, “ – from [Zero Beauty]
~
Remnant and Root:
“there is no language that can articulate what it is I suffer by, or do not suffer by- like all the sufferings suffers I am…” – from [Inactive Currency]
“/ do I even know of longing / I know of being held / “ – from [Wormwood]
“how do I
…love the very gnat of self” – from [Plox]
“holy, holy the black asterisk of wound
for the child I never was” – from [Languid Limbo]
“ ‘murmur’ I had forgotten the word
ash without meaning, death without purpose”
“-I am
a song, an urn, a stairwell” – from [Susurrus]
~
This is a book. The title, to me, is very alone…and, intimacy, the most distant of permissions.
~
barton smock, reflections on marshland moon / poems / eleanor gray / (Dink Press 2016)
book:
http://dinkpress.bigcartel.com/product/marshland-moon-by-eleanor-gray
person, eleanor gray:
http://smakka–bagms.tumblr.com/
