her plane is in the air. she is showing late signs of believing she’s left an octopus in the oven. the man she is with knows nothing about paper. on the ground, in awe of the bee stings on a sister’s bare back, a brother carries orphanhood to term. everything I touch belongs to the same alarm clock.
[dyad]
the homeless woman pokes my belly and says in all creation I’ve got no middle. says she catches herself sometimes pretending to be homeless. says we ought to stone god. says we do with prayer. says the first spider she talked to could speak but didn’t. says she has the two jobs my dad’s between. says she can hear mom or mama in the radio of my brokenness. says angels can’t go mad, can’t parallel park, can’t feign surprise. says she eats with her ears. says she can stop anytime. says I’m someone’s sugarbones. says sound is what god knocks over looking for his mouth. says it could speak its name and it wasn’t spider. says to hell with speech though it be our singing’s salt.
[the visits]
the sex machine has begun to breathe on her own. father sucks a brown bruise into mother’s half of my cigarette. I could be doing a handstand in a prison yard or watching as my cell is turned upside down. brother uncurls a finger from his made fist so deliberately I know he means it to be a hard-on. I crush my eyes with my eyes and try to remember the name my son gave to the loose tooth we hung together from a doorknob. was my son told me the puppets need our hair.
[in Ohio, when mortal]
my brother
jokes
in the barn
about suicide.
the fuck
would eat snow
if it came
from a cow.
I ask him
does he think
mom will miss
two cigarettes.
she’ll miss one, miss yours.
I am half his keeper.
[themes for moon]
dad says we live on a rock from god’s garden of near death experiences.
says throw a fucking baseball.
–
I could not see through my father
so I put my hand there
and it became a baby
with all its fingers
–
I was not raised by scarecrows.
had a toy that answered to wolves.
from [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
blood starts in the nose.
my body is on other things.
dream
is to boy
what taste
is to tongue.
her go-to
word
for hangman
is god.
eat little, not less.
not all of us could be born
–
the rock
won’t leave
my mouth
–
mother eats with her hands
(palmistry)
–
makes father
go weak
at the knees
someone is kissing the top of my head. the garbage disposal is a thunderstorm that’s taken my tooth. the woman who introduced a kitten to a cat named birdbath is painting my fingernails white while the man she’s admonished for pacing is warning me about using a hand for a pillow. came all this way
did the raindrop
to highlight
a stone.
i.
grief
is the angel
apprenticed
to coma
ii.
dearest disabled,
we’re not here
long enough
for god
to do
the damage
he needs
to survive
iii.
this rabbit hole
we’ll use it
for the shadow’s
mouth
as children
we adopt
certain forms
of adaptation.
as lovers, always
an item
away
from owning
a pawn shop.
as adults
of parental
age
we become
our parents
those veterans
of apparition
improv.
the father touches down to draw squares for hopscotch. every photo is a photo of silence. the mother, for the weird kid in her sunday school class, is sewing one sock puppet to another. it’s a lonely job but no one has to do it. the neighbor has just borrowed a hacksaw and, earlier, a box of cake mix. her brother is the boy all have heard explain how insects are sailboats. as for the babies, they’ve been put on suicide watch for the actions of a single lookout. how nearness, love.
waiting for dad to burn off. for mom
to send
in my direction
a phrase
not unlike
keep on
keeping
your ghost
warm. for brother’s
baby
brother
and
for dog. for the hand
museum
to open.
for the asker
of this:
who would want
two hours
of a life
back?
decay
is a form
of waiting.
don’t talk to babies. write. write to be the first one there. the frostbitten woman sucking her thumb has all her teeth. walk once a week into the wrong bathroom. worry. bump around the house at night, noisemaker. a depressed elephant in a walrus graveyard. pull. pull from your habit forming past. be the bomb god’s yet to wear. surround with others the baseball bat signed by the last woman to mourn sleeping beauty. open your mouth then look at your son. call it photography. if spotted, be a monster.
kingsoftrain 