My stomach hurt and I was naming things. A surgeon who’d climbed through our window was telling my father about the time she’d left her hand in a hand. The television was not yet the television that had landed on my brother. Outside meant only that a dog was pretending to shake or was shaking for real. The creature was small and my sister went back.
*All collections are pay what you want, be sure to include your mailing address in the comments of the order, and ALSO be kind...for instance, if you are ordering 100+ page book of poems, like, $4.00 is probably not a kindness. Also, all my recent work is posted here for free. can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock rocks have the softest shadows 237 pages poems, Dec 2020 untouched in the capital of soon 187 pages poems, Sept 2021 blood to bathe us in its blue past 217 pages poems new and selected, May 2022 apartures 125 pages poems, January 2023
The baby steps taken by those who move bodies. God's salted fly. Shirtless fathers burned by the same school bus. Deer as permission to die in Ohio.
A skateboard passed down from wristcutter to barber. The curved spine of the sibling christ. A video game, paused, in a dream. Loud blank sun. Jump scare bodies. Our Spanish teacher filling pills in an Ohio church. A headlight painted like an angel’s knee. Angel’s knee.
My brother says his stomach is wrapped in blue hair that god will never see. A mirror helps me eat a piece of glass.
god thought there'd be more of us
Brother sends a silent baseball through a window the age of water. My dog is all, his dog is hell. If you want red hair, cut your wrist in a pool.
I would read frog as wolf wanting to see words change wanting to name the few not the five thousand murdered thrice-heard boys who cried fly
Three angels share a stomach. Our ears touch, a boat dies. A goodbye. Filmed by no one god knows.
A church left to a church A car on fire all the time The invisible hair of an owl, Fists made by the babies that breathing tried, How I am gone & there are people I forgot to love
kingsoftrain 