do not open
until
I am born
this love letter
to the unreadable
child
who spoke
for god
to god
in poem
the lesser
pity
do
tell my brother
if he has not
yet
wrapped himself
in police
tape
that lightning
above a snowplow
puts a creature
on the roof
book, self-published, looks like this:
(Eating the Animal Back to Life, poems, barton smock, July 2015)
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/eating-the-animal-back-to-life/paperback/product-22277755.html
of which Kazim Ali wrote:
Speaking of being captivated, when I was in Cleveland’s most exciting new independent bookstore, Guide to Kulchur, I picked up on a whim a few small volumes that appeared to have been published by the author using Lulu. I was so entranced by the seemingly simple but endlessly complex, prickly lyrics that I wrote to the author, Barton Smock, through his blog, kingsoftrain.wordpress.com. He’s been sending me books now and then and his latest, Eating the Animal Back to Life, is just knocking me out. These poems are desperate, tender, wry, alarmed, god-obsessed, and musically driven. Smock is not published by others, he does it all himself and so the only place you can get his books is here. All the advanced degrees and publishing credentials in the world can’t get you the unspeakable duende that Smock somehow taps into, poem after poem.
-from Harriet (a poetry blog):
(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/11/pm-reading-list-november-2015/)
keeper
of fields, clean
destroyer
of rooms
where the boys
of murdered
women
single out
a spirit
for doll
crisis…
–
the world of the reminiscing
earth
it wasn’t
that he’d been
in a terrible
accident
but that
the image
I had of him
hadn’t
sight has a single trick
show me a food
can keep
itself
from being
eaten, one of these
is older
than the other (the hands)
the parents
of touch
you can have it
the inside
of my mouth
a mirror’s
hell
–
it’s a toothbrush
lamb-dust
not
a moth killer
–
saint of consensus
god
a toy
that doesn’t
share, mosquito
–
the dream’s
church bell
a deformed salesman
with dog
worries
that maybe
god
has burned
again
her paw
on the cauldron
of rubber
hands, worries
more
that god
will publish
mother’s
books, the two
on gestural
dieting
the one
my absence
ceases
to amaze
who eats
the eaten
way
who cares the same
for bird, for gum
the god of where
the chewing’s
done
I was made
to believe
in the making
of the thing
you were made
to see
–
Q: what is a hand?
A: my own blood squirting out of a fish
–
it is hard to choose a coffin
when your mother
is clutching
a purse
so the dream
of my hearing
heard it
said:
the child
arsonist
is dead
and after
his lantern
of illness
dropped
what shape
his common
ear
became
(to record
the noise
of a mountain
boy) of a flame
the burning
stopped
after punching me in the stomach
my brother
would put his hands
behind his back
and ask
the fish
in the bowl
under my shirt
to forgive
little miss
handcuffs
for making
god
