from collection 'apartures':
WAYSIDES
Brother peeling a hidden orange.
A smoke ring where once
our mouse
played dead.
Hearing loss
in a mother's
wrist.
~
house 1
we are slow with our loneliness
so slow that god
thinks in twos
the snow comes for other snow
a spoon
prays
to a mirror
no one can watch
and the snow
gets away
~
house 3
whose childhood
was the longest
there is always
one friend
with a nosebleed
~
MORE AND MORE POEMS ABOUT SLEEP
a cigarette burn and a bitemark fight over a tooth from the dryer
jesus
was just a kid
~
APARTURE
Yesterday, distance destroyed its early work.
Fog machines fell asleep.
I let my son bite me and believed
for three hours
that it was today.
You told me underwater
about the fog machines.
God looked like death. Death saw.
~
apartures, 125 pages
poems, January 2023
collection is pay-what-you-want
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com
blood to bathe us in its blue past, 217 pages
poems new and selected, May 2022
Pay what you want
via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com
~
some poems, from:
GHOSTALGIA
A drop of blood lands in an eye-sized field.
Imagine
waking up
to cry.
Hide the hidden ant of your son’s loneliness.
~~~
GHOSTALGIA
By the time darkness touches every map, the baby is useless. God a mistake mistaken for a childhood's double life. If there is a horse, there is a horse
thinking only of itself yet also
on the kindness
of a past
horse.
Sight cooks my eye in a voided spoon.
~~~
SAYMOST
No one in the elevator when it dies
-
By x-ray I mean many stars will find my son
Silent
baby’s
baby
silence
wowed
to be given
such tender
access
to the school
shooting
that wasn’t
we ate
in cars
that worked
got sick
of porn
deer
what else
the rich
couple
their baby
turned by god
into three
I grew a spider
in a lightbulb
it came
all this way
to shrivel
in worship
before a picture
of my mother
at nineteen
thinking
of her sister
her sister
her sister
I had two dreams
two different
uncles
they both
drank
and cried
one wanted
me to see
his haircut
the other
wanted
his daughter
to stop
dying
anyway
the un
identified
body
is a body
so police
that
police it
until it kills
itself
on a budget
from 1981
I did
not eat
today
my poor
uncles
her sister
and
my
mom
The body is a scam.
I don’t know what heaven becomes when everyone has died.
Some wild
last
dog
with a numb
mouth…
Some human
tongue
mistaken for a bar
of soap
or unbathed
fish…
Unlove me, I write.
Then say.
I’m sorry
now.
Longing
of course
erases
brevity.
Are fish
born
in the afterfrog
of god’s
face.
My sick
boy
stiffens.
I am not hurt.
America kills nostalgia
nostalgia
when we got here
was dead.
words toward Ann Jäderlund’s LONESPEECH, as translated by Johannes Göransson, (Nightboat Books 2024)
LONESPEECH
Ann Jäderlund
Translated by Johannes Göransson
Nightboat Books, 2024
Ann Jäderlund’s Lonespeech lets sound do the clawing and makes of surface a thing once heard. As translated by Johannes Göransson, it is a work of remaining transmutation. Its verses of desolate accumulation form a one-being cult of the deceptively stripped-down, and with every word comes a new word you’ve only heard repeated. Infant loneliness, rain audio, fried speech. This is an endeavor of transformative non-ness. So, escape and swallow and return. A thing is time if you have time. A thing is time if you don’t.
~
reflection by Barton Smock
This Sunday at 3pm EST!
A couple of my favorite writers. I'll probably say something stupid. They won't.
The SECOND of the 'I think I can't speak for everyone here' reading series will be held over Zoom on Sunday, April 28th, at 3pm EST. Featured writers will be Tom Snarsky and Darren C. Demaree.
**Please email bluejawedsnake@gmail.com for the Zoom link and to sign-up for the open mic.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-one poetry collections, most recently “in defense of the goat as it continues to wander towards the certain doom of the cliff”, (April Gloaming, February 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.
Tom Snarsky is the author of the chapbooks Threshold (Another New Calligraphy) & Complete Sentences (Broken Sleep Books), as well as the full-length collections Light-Up Swan and Reclaimed Water (both from Ornithopter Press). His book A Letter From The Mountain & Other Poems is forthcoming from Animal Heart Press in 2025, and the title poem is available to read on Metatron Press’s GLYPHÖRIA platform. He lives in the mountains of northwestern Virginia with his wife Kristi and their cats. You can find him on Twitter, Instagram, & Bluesky @tomsnarsky.
Current and other:
Sunday April 28th, 3pm EST, featured: Tom Snarsky and Darren C Demaree
Saturday May 18th, 4pm EST, featured: Nadia Arioli and Jay Besemer
Sunday May 19th, 3pm EST, featured: Pamela Kesling and Bee Morris
Sunday May 26th, 3pm EST, featured: Dylan Krieger and Alina Stefanescu
(no events will be held in June)
kingsoftrain 