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August 24, 2023 / barton smock

birthplace,

birthplace 26

The machine
broke
that was making
blood

Machine went everywhere

Machine was found
in the drinking blood

New kinds of birds
were found in the ocean

Some of us were late
we didn’t 

get to die

(Old kinds of birds
in god
August 23, 2023 / barton smock

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birthplace 25

The violence did not survive the poem. I know you wanted to see god. My stomach didn’t actually become a star. I am not good looking and all this has been to say as much. Also, ghost, also. The angel’s diary is light on imagery. Hurt travels by not moving. Yes, they were nudes, but not until I put them face down. Someone had taken from you the only year you’d die.   
August 23, 2023 / barton smock

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birthplace 24

Swimmer’s ear. The far bone. God dreams of ants and surgery. I name a wrist but nothing scrapes mother awake. You’ll lose two kids and a garden. 
August 22, 2023 / barton smock

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birthplace 23

Ohio gives you a well-made baby and a dinner menu. Memory stops at a dog made of sticks. My stomach becomes a star.
August 21, 2023 / barton smock

On The Long Blue Night – poems – Eliot Cardinaux – Dos Madres Press, 2023

ON THE LONG BLUE NIGHT
poems, Eliot Cardinaux
Dos Madres Press, 2023

~

In some nearby deepness, language has forgotten how to understand the conversations between thunder and mirror. That nearby deepness could be singlehandedly so many that it might as well be predestined to be what belongs to poet Eliot Cardinaux in the precisely given away On The Long Blue Night. I question what nearby means and have to pick the echo that replies. But oh the echo that doesn't. If, of late, discovery is in a constant state of rehabilitation, Cardinaux gives us a verse embedded in what it recovers. Gives us a natural melancholy that separates moon and footprint might time pick different days to touch the earth. Gives us shrugged vulgarities of stonestruck awe might language learn eventually how madness cuts us short. This is a work and a voice afflicted with a great noticing, a hidden showmanship, a doomed unpredictability. A joy this tactile is frightening and freeing. I wrote the following note to myself in the reading, and then misread it, and then combined both, which are here: Your poem is in the room writing about the room I'm in. Many things are impossible. 

~

reflection by Barton Smock

~

book is HERE
August 17, 2023 / barton smock

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birthplace 22

Pain is death’s middle and only child. Ghost a light by which god reads. I piss teeth and call it discipline. You turn blue painting kittens on the bottom of a lake. Our fathers know each other as angels beaten for being in the wrong dream. Our mothers look alike at the same time.
August 16, 2023 / barton smock

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birthplace 21
 
A spacesuit made of grief, sure. I don’t have the details. We lost a couple of our children and all the squirrels. There were screams I didn’t know were screams. A purse full of hands was asked to be a baby. Okay, said the baby. My blood eats awe.
August 15, 2023 / barton smock

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birthplace 20

Your animals have forgotten what they can eat. God is selling fishhooks online using the screen name of a twin created through repetition. Sleep gets into your son’s hand. Your son plays dead, and touch believes. 
August 14, 2023 / barton smock

_____ small words toward films ‘Tower. A Bright Day.’ and ‘Beginning’ _____

Tower. A Bright Day. / directed by Jagoda Szelc

Just because it's ancient doesn't mean it's a demon. The world comes for us, despite our rituals. What is it about non-American performances that seem to be lived-in and okay with dying? None of this art matters if there isn't some recognizable earth. Anna Krotoska is revealing and familiar in her demands and commands and reprimands, and makes this whole thing human. What a perfect film. Humanistic, animalistic, so known, so unknown. It only takes a moment. The abyss, the void, the hour of confession, the always of nature, the possessed second. Good goddamn.

Beginning / directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili

What an indictment of absolution. Witness is a weak viewfinder. One mirror turns to salt, one to stone. Fire is just trying to see itself. Sorry, I got drunk. Watch this film anyway. Sober up.
August 14, 2023 / barton smock

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My classmates are describing their perfect meal. Our teacher’s son has died recently in an odd but peaceful way. Three coats so far smell like cigarettes. Angels undress when I eat.