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July 22, 2024 / barton smock

work published at Mercurius

Thanks to Benjamin Niespodziany for giving some space to my work at Mercurius HERE
July 21, 2024 / barton smock

Ethan Hawke letter 29, 072124

Letter 072124

Dear Ethan Hawke

This hasn’t been a success. Time is the sex life of distance. Snake said nothing, but we’d all hear our own way into sound near the tree of loneliness. You name things to forget who you are. I played with my kids, then didn’t. Shaved my head when there was nothing to eat. The miracle should have been shrapnel to snow. Graves ache nowhere into being. With movies, the bleeding is internal. I hear an owl because that’s what it knows to be. God dies at the speed of god.
July 20, 2024 / barton smock

Ethan Hawke letter 28, 072024

Letter 072024

Dear Ethan Hawke

Ghosts are angel money. Everyone in hell lets me love them. The letters will stop. My kids won’t die.
July 19, 2024 / barton smock

sibling machine

sleeping
back to back
dying
July 19, 2024 / barton smock

Ethan Hawke letter 27, 071924

Letter 071924

Dear Ethan Hawke

The writing is only going to get more beautiful. Stop growing, we say. Sleep directs its first play. Its only. God in a glacier. Bombs have everywhere to go.
July 17, 2024 / barton smock

ending child machine

My sister was born inside a man with no fingers. I held a toy gun. My nose bled. A camera with a human memory told me for many years about my son.
July 17, 2024 / barton smock

Ethan Hawke letter 26, 071724

Letter 071724

Dear Ethan Hawke

I feel I’ve been in the room where I’ll die. My little nod to a flower is god at this hour.
July 16, 2024 / barton smock

empty person machine

A glass god tapping the mirror that smells like your baby’s head. 

Itch dying
on an angel’s eye.
July 14, 2024 / barton smock

The ‘I Think I Can’t Speak For Everyone Here’ reading series, Melissa Eleftherion and Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong

Damn this reading blew me away. Deeply salted thanks to Melissa Eleftherion and Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong for speaking to the body, the insect, the bird-inspired stone.

The reading is available on the youtube channel of the reading series HERE

July 14, 2024 / barton smock

Ethan Hawke letter 25, 071424

Letter 071424 think hard on nothing on a farm machine

Dear Ethan Hawke

God is a response to distance destroying itself. Top surgery as a password should surprise no one. Our radios are not the same. My love for line breaks has no end. Ends here. I know the kid’s name but suicide isn’t as specific as a speeding ticket. That poor mom. The rifle of longing, the handgun of birth. This smalltown lightning, starstruck by a colorless proximity.