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.
as for hangman
and as
for the donkey’s
tail
mother
wets the bed
before leaving
to weigh herself.
–
the cave is all mouth.
–
when they ask what our sick
son
has
say
echo.
[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.
[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.
~
from Eating the Animal Back to Life (poems, July 2015)
available here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/eating-the-animal-back-to-life/paperback/product-22277755.html
~
if you’d like to read what Kazim Ali has so kindly written of it, go here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/11/pm-reading-list-november-2015/
i.
some dog is humping the ghost-mourned balloon as mother does her thing in the body of big boy bite mark
ii.
it won’t come back from seeing father go ace on a bag of flour
the crow
if truly
crow
she can’t stop herself
from knowing
the fleas
are burning
what with
her passionless
baby
its biological
god
what would she ask
sadness
that old blindfold
from the future
how did you
get old, how
did my father
eat
and eat
at the same
time
perhaps
you’ve seen it
the mask
that took
my face
the feeling
we’d not
been here
before
–
doom’s little hiccup
–
my brother
dead serious
that we pronounce it
hick
gnosis
my dreams need a more experienced sleeper
it is not the prettiest of sights, the fully capable adult building a sandcastle for my loneliest toe. imagination is grey. let’s pretend there are things.
