I can’t write and write at the same time. there are drugs in my father’s shoe and bread crumbs in my sock. sister can sing but says church gives her two left knees. mother squeezes the hand I feel sorry for. ah, sorrow- no bird walks on water and your babies

are all
neck.

bible and the missing
book
of aspirin.

fast food chains.

mourners.

not roadkill
what crawls
from a costume

the audition calls for a woman to pretend she’s missing her right ear.  a day before I’m scheduled, I wear heels and have my boyfriend mangle my left.  a day after, I’m holding the baby of those who’ve never underestimated their power to look away.  I don’t get the part.  and mom turns it down.

I am not sure which of us has no one

the dog
or the me

–

violence
my crippled
editor

hides
her hair
in grey
spiders

–

grief takes a picture of something I drew

a fish looking for its graveyard

I was in the dream
I was writing
down

there’s a comb
in my narrative, a goldfish

coming to
in a beheaded
angel

the barber and the cyclops
in the nosebleeds

I lost three days of my life. four

less
than my father.

I am sad when two people kiss.

I appear to animal
sounds
that my brother
makes. sister

tells me
with a look
that giving
birth
is the same
as naming
your source.

mom likes the way I say
hypochondriac

after every
meal.

I can only do small things

and

you’ll have to take me at my word.

I have privately published a book titled {in this life another is you} which is a gathering of 50+ unpublished / unavailable / non-displayed poems of mine. I am making it available for 3.00 via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com). all monies I receive for the book will be sent to a poet friend of mine who was injured while clearing debris for others after Hurricane Irma. books will be shipped on October 13th.

wind’s childhood, nothing’s

gift exchange

the poor
in Ohio
say
Ohio

what time I have
to write
I spend
writing.

the insect
in the room.

infants for the end of tourism.

your mom
salting
the empty
doll.

the fat kid
whose mother
owns
a video store
will
for a dollar
let you touch
his eyeball

he is maybe
the church
of the seizure
I had
in a church
that is gone
much

like blind
invisible
women

I prayed, yes
but in
a dream-

ghost
was a book
with pictures

eating lamb
for his lovely
misheard
boy

alien
that I failed
my boys

are lonely

it changed me none to see my father rubbing a lamp in a time machine. mother, too, ain’t been different

since.

–

mirror miss your clock.

high we are beaten for acting like the same horse. memory invades the afterlife. I talk only to the animal that takes me to my sound.

she says
three times
the word
brain
to her stomach’s
blue
mirror
and scores
sight’s wardrobe
of rags
in earworm’s
dream

i.

a puppet’s
glove
a gift
from the pilot
of paper
doll

ii.

a sock for the melancholy of distant hand

ache’s password
is ghost
I mean
what I hear

books to step on, scarecrows

to kiss.

animal
a thing left speechless.

night
a lost
suitcase.

the apple, the quiet. brother’s

double
nodding off
on library’s
secret
horse.

door songs.

mother, mother, father-

to speak
it needs gum
from the invisible
purse.

comes with everything. cries like me.

god remembers

a giant

that to us
was plain

I would read my books by the light of brother burning his. sister could heal with her bare back the angels of lab rats.  father drank water and mother its hiding place.

the boy on my shoulders says my hair is on fire. it is our longest running joke. he laughs so hard my ribs fall asleep in his childless stomach. he takes the cigarette from behind my ear...

his cough is a paintbrush. no father can **** god. the resurrected miss death.

how to bathe
a red chameleon
from the childhood
of Moses

we heard it last night.  the bell on the rabbit’s foot.  it made mom want to cook.  and sleepwalk.  and mice did the wave.

a man turns a brick into a bird, yeah

call beautiful
what you can.

bird has no idea

and my home
is there.

we come for death, stay for mother.

I cut myself
might a memory
make room
for sound.

god studies his own cure.

holes
for breathing

some get
to heaven.

I know a woman whose shadow will never be the same.

–

we are eating from a bowl that wants to go home.

god’s brain was devoured by a stone.

I saw my father. he was on his second bird.

his teeth were yellow.
or yellowish.

little doors, little me.

a room of real yellow.

a cigarette burn and the time it tells once. gum in the puppet’s hair.

blind date
with birth.

until I found her cigarettes, my mother was a giant. is there something I can say online that will give me hands? leave an empty laundry basket in a cave that’s crying. rain gives water a church.

for the gone and for the nearly, brother has the same stick.

I call belly
what he calls
eye
what answers

to limb

three unicorns
in horse’s
dream
surround
a lame
deer

can dream
be stopped

swimmer’s nostalgia. grain of salt.

the infant
is clumsy
but no one
knows

I say
into beer cans
code names
for ear

oh earth
to dog
miss

whole phantoms

death writes to me from an unfinished foster home.  other things are also untrue.  how subtle.  light’s

list
of demands.  focus

on crying
in a messy
car
absent
the animal
you’ll worship

last.

in no other life
am I you
in this

how many fingers, fork

will hunger
lose

-

I am the trap
god sets
for my kids

overtook no cigarette. surprised no sleep. keyed the car

of a minor
toymaker.

radar is getting possessive.

how am I not a dream? I am not a place. I can’t say rabbit but can robot. my god knows one story. those I count when I’m sad are those I count when happy. grandfather means pipe-smoke and grandmother an outdoor pool. their daughter is a lamb-haunted horse. I see Ohio as an ear but still I ask what happened to the ear in question. I don’t sleep unless I need proof I never. I am older than the brothers I scare. travel is my sister’s vehicle. my dog is chewing on a rubber hand. it can’t be dark in both.

his whole life he described himself
to a dying boy

because her son can see the future, she is not yet born. god matters to the discovered.

and stork
is never
home

dancing
badly
in a small
eye

–

by beehive
what churches
know

absence and removal, the parents
of nowhere

pity
they don’t
smoke

the suicide of a mother’s
swimming

instructor. the browsing

history

of little
ghost.