comb sick
in the dunce
cap
dark
my son
means
to impress
his hair
: some new, some old, some reconsidered:
On birthmarks
and the glacial
pace
of god
the abandoned books of women
hurry, grief, your mice
to a nearby
field.
close, silence, your mouth
in the virgin scar
of mine.
distill, wind, the river
your nude
fiction.
scarecrow
if I am worn, let me help you
undress.
loss of the family dog
be alone. enter snowfall as a heavy breather in a white dress
window shopping
for a red.
know
that in between heaven and hell, there is war. hell thinks it a nightmare, heaven thinks it hell. hell sleeps more than your sister in love. heaven counts warriors and can’t put an angel on why the numbers keep changing.
as increased chatter is good for morale, call your mother and say you are her appetite.
scoop the brains of your buddies into a helmet.
annotations for daughter
the second coming of self harm has entered a town called Both.
having a baby is a mouthful.
–
think of yourself as a journal death keeps.
~
: some recently read and recommended:
(from poetry collection Fire Sign, by Katherine Osborne, Electric Cereal 2015)
I was
encouraged to write a letter
to my boyfriend who died
in a fire. The therapist crossed
her legs, sat upright in a chair
I saw her one time. She diagnosed me
with grief. I don’t take anything for it,
I don’t do anything about it. I just keep
writing and writing and writing
and I won’t go back, I won’t
show her. It says terrible things
we did terrible things, I keep
telling them your voice
changed. And I get his voice and your
voice confused. I’m looking out my window,
the one in the kitchen, the one that looks out
at no particular tree, but if I wanted to
hallucinate, really bring myself to my knees,
I’d choose an almond tree. Or one of those once in a lifetime
trees you see out in the Northwest, you’re the kind of
friend that will correct me, or tell me this is the funny part
of the poem because I’m really funny?
But it’s not, this is the part where everyone just realized
you killed a horse.
http://www.electriccereal.com/bookstore/fire-sign-by-katherine-osborne/
~
When A Happy Thing Falls (by Tim Kahl, from his collection ‘The String of Islands’, Dink Press 2015)
It is not an angel but a feather
falling on a field in winter. The rain,
still weeks away and now
the fog the hawk must sift through
as it waits sitting on a fencepost for
the mist to settle. Nothing passes;
nothing is present except the vague
threat of the imminent. Something
is going to happen- the marks of it
are already beginning to emerge
through the gloom. The hawk is
expecting it, geared to any sudden
movement. And its vigil continues
in the field where the fence is broken.
The fog rolls over the standing clumps
of earth like white linen for wrapping
the dead. It is almost futuristic,
a scene where anything may take place,
where the silence echoes,
where the numinous occurs and something
significant is nearly ready to descend.
But what falls is not an angel.
In the sky a creature blindly hunts
for anything alive in its instant of joy.
http://www.dinkpress.com/store/the-string-of-islands-tim-kahl
~
also:
for those interested, I have 15 signed copies of my full length poetry collection ‘earth is part earth and there’s a hole in the sound I made you from’ (Dec 2015, 98 pages) and 8 signed copies of my full length poetry collection ‘eating the animal back to life’ (July 2015, 316 pages) that I’d love to mail, free of charge, for sharing and/or for burning. send a physical address along with the collection desired to bartonsmock@yahoo.com if this is something one hand or two of yours would like.
~ Barton
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/eating-the-animal-back-to-life/paperback/product-22277755.html
~
also, my daughter is 17 and wrote this:
~
and also, re:
what with its bookends of birth and death, a certain silence, is poetry. want to thank both judge and judgment for being quiet long enough to cast a partial shadow on said silence. anxiety is not exclusively for the anxious. please know, you, please know, me: I will not call, every sound, speech.
for Katherine Osborne
falsehoods
I was sure
to say
to a horse, things like
god is sending
his middle
child
to collect
a drop
of my daughter’s
blood, or
it’s a sin
to be
1989, things I felt
I owed
the horse, that were
horse-like
in their stillness, that went
nowhere
when nowhere
was
come fly
or flat
earth
the dark’s
bitch
death
with its collection
of misfit
bookends
has an ear
for birth
if birth
is speaking
on the loss
of an empty
headed
photo
–
is god going to fuck it up
the addict’s
spotless
campsite
yes
in the dream
I hadn’t been
using
a ghost
in love
with a paintbrush
this ankle
not
from memory
when father heard
it said
that god
reads only
to children
he began
talking to himself
behind
his mother’s
back.
a poor person
sad
about pillows, a stick person
sad
for a match.
the child you won’t have because the child hates surprises. the story, your mother’s, of the pillow that struggled like an owl. the werewolf, humble, and afraid of clowns. the ramblings of a newborn. the twin boys of Cain.
reading from earth is part earth and there’s a hole in the sound I made you from:
~
book and book preview, here:
~
poems, from, book:
[male sequence]
in one room
a light is on
in another
off
–
I live with my parents
hymn to mouth
delivering
fluency
by hand
to the language
of vicarious
passage
–
gender peasantry
is about
to become
a thing
–
mom, dad
I don’t think there’s world enough left to be quiet in
–
my bad hearing
I take it
with me
[notes on the assault]
I always ask my brother which eye he wants to open in the dark. I have a foreign notion of how to be homesick. I have a son whose body won’t tell him he’s well. I see the face of god as an idea gods use to evoke intellect. as a girl, the man of few words found himself surrounded by things she could describe.
[cripplings]
touch is a sign of weakness. my father opens his mouth after speaking. meanwhile, miracle, it occurs to me in separate car accidents that bringing me to my son in god is less an undertaking than that of arming the man who transports a stopwatch to a cemetery. do we live the lives of those experimenting? beauty is not alone. suppose it knows.
[vale]
in the house that doesn’t go to heaven
my father lives
the life
of a stowaway.
tell the tornado how poverty has too many gods.
/ the walls have ears. I have
my collection
of roaches
wrapped in foil / someone
will take my word
what firewood
was.
for Franz Wright, late
~
the hand
I don’t wash
has never
been touched.
is the last
woman
on earth
pregnant?
the children are burning
yet
my son
is not enough
to fill
your nose.
I saw god
he was crawling
away
from a clean
diaper. it would be my only regret
to miss
the encore
of death.
I saw today a moth so large it could probably replace what it was your dad hit with his car. the size of things lately has me putting babies on the shoulders of those behind this groundhog-eating craze. I’ve moved back in with mother. I’m waiting for her to know. high note: they’re okay, my tormentors, they’re not surprised I’m ugly. my brother still believes his tongue is proof he was once made to swallow an extension cord. because of what happened, I’ll never be different.
