it gets so you can’t throw a rock without having a baby. not all of us talk this way but you have to hand something to the ones that do. I’ve seen voodoo dolls with more personality. had my mother’s god been my father’s, I would’ve gone blind from staring at my birth.
recently written:
eating the animal back to life, 316 pages, poems-
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/eating-the-animal-back-to-life/paperback/product-22277755.html
recently spoken:
interview by Sarah Marcus of Gazing Grain Press-
recently touched by:
The Sugar Book, by Johannes Goransson
Keen, by Lauren Gordon
Ohio Violence, by Alison Stine
I enter with my small life to profile the impressions you did of my brother. these kids, they cough in photos. as for her, her father’s voice could up and speak at a moment’s notice. I move the gun daily. if my head wasn’t glued on, I’d have lost my ears to the hive mind of ghost forgiveness. my brother liked to play leap frog. fuck art. we live too long.
with a kid for each hiding spot, father thanks god while mother takes a head count. I am back from the fair with a rendering of how I will look to my rapist. my brother is already in position and has contorted himself in a manner he thinks will convince me he can shrink his ears. my sister is nowhere a bumblebee can’t find. our puppy picks a new favorite because it bruises easily. numbers game or no numbers game, loneliness is coming.
I am made mostly of trying to find my way back to bread
I blow into the infant’s mouth as if I could prepare an echo for what’s about to happen. in my dream I am turning on a flashlight that thinks it can scream. in yours, reincarnation is all the brevity our lord can stomach.
violence
is the only body
that takes a lifetime
to bruise.
I know this guy
so to speak
calls his cock
god’s shortcut.
I can’t reach my hands.
father kicks me under the table
for biting
early.
a ghost hears thunder.
my dog dies
and I take
its place.
because he could be anyone
I use my dad
to get laid.
christ had two sons
his daughter
ate.
