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August 2, 2016 / barton smock

cellar verse

the knee of hers I don’t kiss

this region
long
on religion

/ the house
she’d have robbed
had her insides
changed

August 2, 2016 / barton smock

poetry

my grief writes in the wrong diary
of the orphan
in her tummy

August 1, 2016 / barton smock

eve

gathering roadkill for a game of musical chairs

/ the juggler, the darkness

August 1, 2016 / barton smock

depictions of reentry (xxv)

at a costume party thrown by starvation

kissing the baby of the creature
that taught
Judas

July 31, 2016 / barton smock

theatrics

play, image, your joke on heaven.

infancy, you destroyer
of nuance

use
the whole
animal.

July 31, 2016 / barton smock

depictions of reentry (xxiv)

I love fake things. the tasered clown. the sheep my young father remembers being sliced like bread. the paper shredder that kept some animals from entering the time machine. the baby in riot gear. the other baby telling itself not to move. the blood’s blood type.

July 30, 2016 / barton smock

depictions of reentry (xxiii)

it is allowed one diaper per pissed-on anthill. its mother gets everything on the first guess. it only leaves its body to interrupt god. it eats a stork. you’re eating dove.

July 30, 2016 / barton smock

hydra

my first worm
I thought
it was being
dragged

I was just a boy

it was just
worm
like

/ stillness
has it always
been
genetic

/ the context of god, the deadpan

birth
of son…

/ nowhere’s

by design
butterfly

July 29, 2016 / barton smock

partesque

paint
with fire
the funny bone

the fence…

stray thing
from dog’s
ashtray

July 29, 2016 / barton smock

[]

older poems

~

[dream’s fossil]

dear eggshell belly. dear mother. dear church of my father’s owl. dear Ohio. dear owl the deaf bee’s church.

~

[the lost]

before it is dark enough to carry the television into the forest and leave it, a mother checks the oven for her loaf of black bread. her overseas child follows a dead fly to another dead fly and so on. her sensitive brother turns over in his grave to be on all fours. her wiser husband rips the cord from the base of the television and uses it to whip the basement door. when the door opens, any dog will do.

~

[men hermetic]

the crow
the fine print
of nowhere.

the bomb shelter
the rumored locale
of a mother’s
laundry room.

the bare cross
the teething
toy
a baby
bypasses
for the neck
of the woman
waiting
for her junk
to fall.

the mare
the anxious
bike.

~

[cessation psalm]

the less said about god’s addiction to brevity

as heard
by the angel
of birth

~

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as such:

~shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner [& other poems]

book:
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reading from:

~MOON tattoo

book:
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reading from:

~

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