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April 9, 2015 / barton smock

themes for tattoo

to tell god
he swallowed
a thunderstorm
you will need
a seashell

I say to the boy
that before
this brain
of his
there were other

brains
the angels
thought
were bugs

malnutrition
can close
a wound

on the moon, my name is Noah

April 8, 2015 / barton smock

early work

the babies my father held.

the hell, the world’s
largest.

the parts of the house
that caught fire
in two
moving

vans. the bully

mother poisoned
in the dreamy
media
of religious

thought. the daring

suicide, the doubled
god.

April 8, 2015 / barton smock

crows

give praise
god’s ashes
are still
collected

April 7, 2015 / barton smock

fieldwork

the evacuated court of my son’s illness.

the blind man’s
missing
eyelid.

the grief, the broth, the reacquired thrift.

the dispersed body. the hotbeds

of skeletal
trauma.

the dance music as mother’s
chthonian
darling.

the sorrow method. the rhythm.

April 7, 2015 / barton smock

moonsick

it is okay that my son’s face goes white. I am using my son for water. some of his blood leaves him to become a rooster. some of his blood hardens in the coffin of his wrist. some of his blood enters an incantatory narrative. some of his blood is the body. some believe the body is drought’s battery. I am big on bodies. you might know my father by his spearheading of the ghost indictments. or by the clock you call love that he called the lifespan of his wife’s pregnant hostage.

April 7, 2015 / barton smock

action figures of the opposite sex

the lonely man holds that the mouth is god’s mark. the lonely man announces with a blow dryer my bath bound mother. years ago, I was caught doing two things and was sentenced while both were speaking. nowadays, I hear for my father who listens politely to talk of never let a beast be your eyes.

April 6, 2015 / barton smock

modicums

the child
saint
of separation
anxiety
eats

so little
that when
he
or she
chews
open

mouthed

a ghost
gets
a birthmark

April 6, 2015 / barton smock

screamer

god says
you have the soul
of a tapeworm.

the luck
you’re in
is your father
the kisser
of baseballs.

the sound
in my body
do you think
it’s gone?

April 5, 2015 / barton smock

appetence

I stab my father with a carrot so I can say he lives to the pacifist who broke the television we were called to witness. I run after my children because they think they are chasing nothing down the street. god blows two bubbles that become the eyes of a crucified man. the last arm in the world will be a prosthetic arm made for the toddler who will die in the meat of the dying. your father has an apple in one hand and a tomato in the other. everyone is poor. everyone is responsible for how it is portrayed to the bun in the oven. the softness we reserve for women has gone to our teeth.

April 5, 2015 / barton smock

neighborhood wine

it’s the same in every model. the cat is first, then the dog, then the baby the cat eats in a dream. while I can’t speak for his cough, I can say my son doesn’t belong to god. my fear of water snakes, though vaguely tied to my father’s shaved belly, began with a bike that was given to my brother with no one on it.