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April 16, 2015 / barton smock

Ohio barn owl

as I search
the mirror
for the size
of god’s
fingernail, a hair
of mine
goes grey

April 16, 2015 / barton smock

themes for mitochondrion

your son’s disorder
is used
by some
to draw
a straight line, a sleeping
circle…

my soul is eating all my food

agenesis
of what
of nostalgia’s

panic

April 16, 2015 / barton smock

themes for gut

sister
she bleeds
in the bath
thinking
we’ve finally
run out
of water.

of the cheering
mothers, my mean
ass
mother
wants to be alone
with the two
it took
to cut a baby
in half.

myself
I take it on the nose
the baseball
my father
doesn’t
crush.

April 15, 2015 / barton smock

themes for tongue

the woman who doesn’t believe in light
can fix your mouth

I have no double
to love
my triple

the man with no teeth
borrows
a ladder

April 15, 2015 / barton smock

baptismal

while my mother
swims
in the lake
where my father
learned
to coexist
with his ability
to be
alone,

to which
my father
brought
the seashell
his father
coined
the ocean’s
bible,

I sleep
the sleep
of my hair
not the sleep
of its brush

April 15, 2015 / barton smock

lithic

I am too wrapped up in my own stomach
to visit the mother
who worships

mine

April 15, 2015 / barton smock

themes for tail

the nonfiction section in my father’s library of sleep
is faith

mother comes to me in a dream to tell me she’s thinking of pulling out

epilepsy isn’t something you can see. clearly, it’s the snake
one tries to give it to

when people are gone, they’ve gone to ask

April 14, 2015 / barton smock

water that sister moves a net through

brother masturbates with an almost invisible dedication.

mother
yells
from the river

that all rain
is highway
robbery.

while reciting
proverbs
for mitochondria
I pass the time
wearing
my father’s
shoes

for the footsteps
in his head.

April 14, 2015 / barton smock

themes for fat

I puke sand
into the infant’s
mouth
in low
praise
of the male
form
made

famous

by a statue
that sold
not
for its representation
of a dominant
existence
but for
the delicacy
with which
its creator
handled
the angel’s
erection

April 13, 2015 / barton smock

stage presence

on the life of his mother

loneliness
was the spell
he could not
recall