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some poems from the work, here:
[least]
there I was
lightweight, eyesore
baby satellite
and baby
drum
imagination’s
dull witness
my hair
prematurely
cat-torture
grey
my person
the length
of a sandbox
shovel
teeth
a tooth, a commandment
from the past
lives
of milk
[harrower]
it is easier now that I know I was never going to be a better person. if I once called poetry the grieving arm that ends in five short complaints, I am sorry. I watch my son lick the space on the table where he’ll put his cheek. it is not for me to believe he is a sign of warnings to come. the distant memory of his tongue is not mine to betray. I want to kiss you to the sound of god counting footfalls on a mountain path. for one, I have never been completely covered in bruises. also, I was in the spotlight when my mother was asked to describe a sponge. instead, she identified the break in the letter where a father changed pens and childhood as the longing of Eve.
[On suicide]
I was here long before you guessed my age
–
(our proverbial sister dons again the birthday suit of body language)
–
the dog won’t eat. might it know
we come from the family of sitting and dying?
it’s all in your head. the newborn we had on a mountaintop. the word it knew from memory. its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate. the cold our dog died from. the tent we called aquarium. that we filled with diapers. that was never full.
poetry and god share the same quick death.
I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.
beneath the tethered astronaut of his dream
the impossible boy
misses
something small
the human ear, its recent
brush
with whale
/ does the demon
know
I’m the same
clue
memory
has nothing
it remembers
making
–
I’ll know an animal when god sees one
–
the guard
I slept with
gave me
you
–
pain, indicia, Amen
the boy
whose first
computer
was pain
they put something in his food
to make
him drink…
–
one animal
out of how
many
–
marries
–
to avoid
god
the dog moves from sun to shade
its master writes of the beating
a woman
takes
I saw
I can prove it
the size of that tick
does anyone
remind me
to eat
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my most recent book is here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/earth-is-part-earth-and-theres-a-hole-in-the-sound-i-made-you-from/paperback/product-22520444.html
~
below are some poems from ‘eating the animal back to life’ (July 2015):
[tautologies]
an infant with still hands is said to be fingerpainting in hell. a man who wears a hat to bed is said to give god hair. a boy who strings up dead rabbits left and right is said to be fighting a toothache. a girl who punches herself in the nose is said to be a plain woman who on roller skates entered a strange traffic of hearse and horse as two of her mother’s footsteps.
[first appeared]
father kicks me under the table
for biting
early.
a ghost hears thunder.
[notes to abuser]
I have had to tell time using only repetition. there is a tattoo I want on a body I don’t. I can see what you see in me. none of my sounds echo. I have a son. I prepare for him past meals that leave nothing untouched hoping he’ll learn to chew on his own. he has three rooms upstairs and three down. when his bed can’t move, he says something to a door.
[immersion]
your attacker has a history of being baptized. identifies as male. was found hallucinating in a movie theater run by his father. we shot him not knowing he’d already been. his mother says his stutter is an act. she is what we call empty inside. you look like your father.
[onlookers]
I blow into the infant’s mouth as if I could prepare an echo for what’s about to happen. in my dream I am turning on a flashlight that thinks it can scream. in yours, reincarnation is all the brevity our lord can stomach.
[maker]
when I think about you
I don’t
[incarnate]
after we roll the dead dog from its towel and into god’s mouth
we take
for its tooth
a fly’s
grave.
satan’s kid continues to play chicken with a farm machine
in a slow
not still
life.
[exposure]
in a hotel bathtub
beneath a crooked
showerhead
two boys
on thumb war
number seven
are seen
by the same
hallucination
their colorblind
father
had
during
his dry spell, his bug
collecting
craze
when their mother
was the god
she went back
to being
[a photographic memory that applies only to acts of eating]
in the oar I broke on my brother’s knee
I found
a human
tooth.
here is a lamb
floating
in the reflection
of a star.
kingsoftrain 