~ youth ~
holding a baby
as if she’d
had it thrown at her
my mother
came out of the museum-
it had stopped raining
it had also
stopped
snowing
and people
were giving me
money
~ to message ~
to be somewhere without a book on my person. hard word this, hard word that, for the never arriving marble of grief. to rename fish from the lobby window of a submerged hotel. to let the water from my mother’s body but not before telling her god lives in me as long as my son is outside. to have nothing but the mewing compositions of rooftop strays to keep me from becoming the devil your pen pal was fed to. to die well. die punctuated. by imagery the drowning cull from years on land spent openly preparing the eaten, subliminal beast.
~ disburden ~
god went from wall to wall unaware he was god disguised as a graffiti artist. renderings of my son on a ventilator adorn the moving city. the homeless are tattoos that remove themselves. I guard the outlying cross and go through the motions again of nailing to it the same madman. my only tool is comfort. in flight, a wasp carries something it’s not.
~ apace ~
after a child drowns in a child, the church bathroom is scrubbed
in full view
of the elderly.
provided they have gestural transportation
a second class
on image crafting
is held off site.
~ clotheshorse ~
a father shepherds his family from the storm cellar as his own father prepares to lose the orchard.
your life is a boy
looking for signs
made by women.
your mother is a vow of silence
you were born to second.
I am nobody I speak of. those alive to nuance, those seeing
a necklace in a grandmother’s clotted leg.
god is not silent. god is forgiven.
~
from – father, footrace, fistfight – (June 2014)
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad
the film
halfway through
had this idea
gave mother
heartburn
–
the baby
–
the baby is a monster with a broken foot
–
it comes out of my mouth this thing that feeds a brother
it learns to read but only has time
for phantom
–
cosmonauts
–
mother she loses father to headaches anonymous
mother she likes the film
it’s one
of one
it reminds her of raccoons
refusing
to eat
–
profane chauffeur, grief
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.
heart means:
people saying:
person Kazim Ali…Smock…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. / 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.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/11/pm-reading-list-november-2015/
person Emma Hall…Smock has found a way to speak for those who don’t perhaps know that they have something important to say; to share. The marginalized child, the grieving mother, the ailing child or sibling- they will all find a voice here, and though it might not be the way they would voice the affliction that rests within them, they are sure to recognize their faces. Whether this is a burden or a blessing remains a judgment to be formed by the individual reader, but I find the poetry in this collection to be full of the intensity of experience in a way that I can’t help but identify and empathize. Something preserved so as not to be forgotten, and perhaps repeated.
https://kingsoftrain.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/review-by-emma-hall-of-barton-smocks-self-published-poetry-collection-hallelujah-lip-synch/
something that is where:
he can’t tell a baby
here
not from
a hole
in the ground
a white sock in father’s stomach
the rabbit’s head
we use
for mowing
saying
instead of chore
char, mother
saying
it’s his
her blood
sleepwalking
the waters recede and god
good for him
saves
with the carcass
of a deer
mama’s
parking spot
/
unrelated, I have begun to see
the fat kid we surrounded for pulling a knife on a bird
(—)
licking its wounds it is still an animal.
what does it mourn?
the lack reach of my tongue?
me / me I have
lost my sense of a peopled earth.
(—)
my wordless
my disabled
he was licked
at birth
by a deer
–
as a writer, the writer
wrote to me
fuck
–
writers
–
have you ever
tried to give
a stomachache
–
to a shadow?
–
it is not all graph
not all
grief, not worth
–
one’s salt
–
to speak
for any
content
that demands
form
(—)
a palm reader
with mouths
to feed
does
my mother’s
nails. I overhear
I love
babies
but god
they live
so long.
–
my brothers will tell you
I avoid
capitalization
eating
in front of others
threesomes
–
who was it
asked
–
from whose memory were you erased?
again, we have given the baby too much credit. these are simply the gods I grew up without. here is my son serenading the seizures his mother salvaged from the praying I do for my hands. here he is repeatedly not. here is yours the psalmic nonverbal. here they are shadows limiting death’s vocab in a tiny tent not crawling with legs of lamb.
if man’s interpretation of god leads man to interpret man, we are lost. my neighbor is crying. that’s not her house.
kingsoftrain 