I believe my mother when she says we are here to forget the girl god was trying to impress. that we are to follow starvation to its wrongly named foods. that breads are condemned

birds. scissors the writer’s churchbell.

grief in the near future

(practicing)

safe
grief

(i)

no one in heaven is named after god.

place is an animal. animal a cure

for déjà vu

(ii)

my hands
are the hands
my hands
could rescue

(iii)

I was wrong. now is not

the afterlife
of the present.

not
yet

(iv)

our towels are asleep in the oven. our surroundings

lonesome.

/ mom severs mother from the **** vocab of our nakedness

~

[accident]

because
when mine
stopped

your sadness
was still
moving

~

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

~

[dear you]

I am at a word
for loss

~

[nostalgia]

my father
he was in
this poem
yesterday
so deeply
that I-

****.

they repo
even
dark.

~

[goodbye]

my penchant for last things does not end

I lost you before I lost you. your stickmen were free of anxiety. they left a church to the potbellied ghost of your muscle. their word for tree was branch. what god couldn’t finish they called wind. baby an air that stopped breathing.

drunk above a son I cannot feed, I don’t long to swim

but do
to have my mother’s hair
combed
by a horse-

birth
oh when
was I tamed

a brother sleepwalks and beats his sister. daylight, brother looks for her abuser but can’t stay awake long enough to catch the person he doesn’t know he is. sister fears what he may become. I have two children, Object and Permanence. they examine my spotless body

like aliens

who cannot hurt their own but want to.

–

boy has no name
so town
has no name

–

when my younger brother was born, his program made him human. because of this, my mother was thrown in jail. my own program gives me the power to look like anyone I’ve seen. I need you to write down what you look like because it’s me to the rescue.

–

her hand is a ray gun that can only stun babies not yet born. her grief is a time machine that wants to grow old.

–

as they had no memories of being children, mom pretended she had been their mother and told them stories of the funny ways they’d been in trouble.

sound’s shy historian, digger

of a hole
for the mouth

forgetting
to signal

I was dead
I thought about death
I died

sleep was the only spotlight my mother could avoid

if you see a wolf, know suicide

has stopped
working

swimming with father, I said jesus is not the best scarecrow
and father said
swim

I still can’t find Ohio in the the bomb-maker’s Ohio

sister
she feels
brilliant
when there is less
of her
to eat, she is often alone

people I’ve never been to

sister has to use her body to care for her body.  teacher of dolls. believer in the grenade become star.  her blood she is told could ruin her baby’s nose.  her thumb is a comma.  god’s is a crow.

I am framed by a quiet that exonerates silence

god is the story
is not
the teller

don’t unpack, she says
we will be
eyes

tomorrow puts it out there
it wants
kids

animals have two souls

go
like light
to undress

a birdwatcher with broken hands, I am the cry of my mother’s body. she climbs the tree she was left in and smokes back the years of breathing underwater. whatever you’ve been through, this poem waited for me to survive.

one cannot love the ocean
without asking an orphan
to be
specific.

I tell my words
to use
my poems.

father he quotes
echo. his shadow

a short story
by ghost.

have kissed the ear
of a small
boy
they do not
love
whose voice
eats bread
through a mask…

have scored their grief
as inefficient
sadness, and accepted

bowling *****
from three-fingered
men.

hit your children. my own, I love the way they look

before I don’t. every shadow

leaves its post

I cured my son
in another
language

that of a perfect child
born
to draw
a circle-

doorbell, house of nothing

I would look in the mirror to see if people knew I was ugly and maybe now my son does the same. in mine, god had no soul. in his, god’s soul has nowhere to go. I love you. I don’t matter. I love you and I don’t matter.

–

if I could go back in time, I’d help her take care of me

the person
who reports
photos
missing, my sockless

brother, the tooth fairy’s

bones

“Probably I’ll die like this,
a long time ago.” – Franz Wright

I will never forget hearing god pronounce your name
to a ghost obsessed with wolves

out there in the dogness

in a home
for animals
that have tried
to undress

she weighs
the child
and the child
the doll

sack race. minotaur.

(the stone)

a before
and after
picture
of absence.

a barber
in a swim cap

combing
the dream

for a surgeon’s
toothpick

[in this life another is you]

father paints an abstract jesus.  my sister bites at the shoulder strap of her bra.  my brothers

to keep from crumbling
are sharing
bread.  

-

I draw a violinist.  a dog

at the neck of its owner.

-

in our imaginings
gutted baseballs

became

the skulls of small animals
through which
the wind

called heads.

-

in heaven’s garage
they’ve yet
to make
a horn
that works.

the kids have gone two or three years now without being raised.

the match
unlit
by your tooth
is paradise.    

-

a refrigerator rocks in a junkyard.

either the door has jammed, or she

is pregnant.

-

a cement wall
scraped
in passing
by one
with a stick
is the love
we have
for father

-

depression is a dog whistle.  I miss dinner sounding it out.

-

(when a scar of thunder / outs itself / I am blue)

or bluish

(like a sock in a blue
coat’s
pocket)

-

it is cruel to hang anything above a baby’s crib

-

I can only guess
I was happy
in the womb
with how
my mother
looked

-

the bunk
above mine
I call
deathbed

is

my brother’s-

he has
his own
way
of thinking

showerhead
is spotlight

-

here is a test:  circle
the parts
of a circle

(a sameness)

in the parrots
we care for…

our suicides
fight
for position

-

in the apple
air
of hem
and haw
a pacing
uncle
blank
as a broom
regards
the *******
half
of a doorknob

or

two men
carry a ladder
past a cemetery

one thought
between them

-

this nonfiction
not
what you’d
imagined

-

mother an artifact of paranoia

-

paper
scissors
milk

-

blacktop
pools
at the neck

of a crow.

half eaten
children
limp
home.

an umbrella.  a bra.  a harp.

a street we call satan.  

-

water, make your fist.  hold your breath
in a single
fish.

-

delirious
when the lights
went out
mother
would pull cocoons
from the oven    
tell us
to stop
kicking

-

it was a very strong soap
she’d use

a soap that squealed
against

the skin

her heart  
a hiccup’s
echo

her eyesight the sound of a drill

her eyes
two holes
in a turtle’s
shell

her eyes for seeing

the food in her mouth

-

the sobbing ventriloquist was my idea.  mother and father they were taking turns moving shampoo through my hair as I hummed.  doom was a color.  a mare kneeling on a bed of maroon straw.  miles off, an ambulance driver entered a silent film and tried to buy a garage door opener.    

-

children from abusive studio apartments inherit warehouse jobs from problem immigrants.  a bruise of ***** darkens the front of your jeans.  I am mugged in your dream and mugged in mine and mugged by a woman in both.  for now, this field.  my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat

of exodus.  in memory alone I am alone.

-

under crow
and flat
on my back
in the loft
of my uncle’s
barn
my shadow
is still
she
who upright
confessed
so loudly
that her heart
flew
into a quiet
sky
as she
collapsed

-

on television
the world’s smallest ghost town.  on a shadow

socks match

-

no longer graveyards, I tend what is everywhere resting.  I crawl like a toothache, long with her death.  the voices move from head to mouth.  

a squirrel on fire.  an act of god.  

I don’t think seeing such things is enough to put

vague
& crow
into one bed.  she is asleep

or fingered
by a man
with seven.      

-

in a country store
a barefoot girl
walks on her heels-

long stride and baby.

the store’s owner
happily shelves
popcorn, gauze

     the thought of his father
doing nothing.

-

beating my clothes
with me
in them
mother
irons
a man
from the moon  

(who giggles in us poorly)

for love

-

if my father admits in his bed that some mice are alive when he bends
to the earth
a cornstalk
and lets
fly,

I have to find the mouse
that means
other mice.  

-

wish I could dream away the bad mornings spent cheating on her sadness        

-

illness, assault.

presence
a blank
petition

-

in the end my mother was mostly an ocean dipped into by lightning.  

a mother whose hands were broken by recent events.  events that evoke transcription.

-

assault:

maid
loses cart
to stairwell

-

illness:

a birthmark, a scar, and a tattoo

eating under
a blanket

~

[hospital young]

years back I met god in some nowhere town before I was born to teach symbolism. I know what room I’m in by the tv show my mother’s watching. dear ghost, I hope you like the parrot. from what word did letter come. existence mourns non. grieve on sight.

~

[untitled]

fog overtakes toad
& boys
are born.

ghost yoga. crucifixion.

train is a tunnel
train’s never
seen.

two dead crows- I’m shoeless again.

~

[food (xiii)]

while pacing the hallway of a floor that elevators skip, an amateur eulogist pictures an error-prone barber in a bath of milk who gave as a gift a rocking horse with a bad stomach to a child healing a cobweb for a starless bear.

~

[untitled]

after seeing the girl I have a crush on sign my friend’s arm cast, I spend the weekend jumping out of a tree, trying to land on my left, in the backyard of the last person who knew to hide the head of god. I break nothing but the blood from my nose could fill a football. vandalism starts in the face. it’s dark. I treat my mouth like a scratch.

~

[notes for insect]

I will never know a ghost story

god does not

a birthmark
is a churchgoing
scar

I clip her nails
whose doll collects
cereal boxes

(for JP)

running with my brother
those three miles

seconds
kept
by a watch
of salt

the bland
sons
of distance

the names

of the born
between

we bid
in Ohio
on a pack
of condoms
dropped
by the invisible
man.

birth approaches its black stoplight.

in clothes
that fit
I feel
remembered.

keep the baby

eats
during thunderstorms

the evil was mine, the face wasn’t. some were delivered by one who wore a monster mask.

the smallest mouth guard. viruses

transmitted
by dream

close by, a man is relearning how to cradle his corrected son.

my luck
the alien
I saw
was disabled

from ghost-written diaries
a constant identity

late
for its own
resurrection

my stories go nowhere.

god
and his tree
of hunger

two ears
at once
her wounded
boy

–

sleep has one god

absence, none

–

the cough
he had
the week
he was missing

clown car
too much
for ghost

these names, before you were born. colorblind orphan, yawnless fish. ghost with calendar.

look at me
when I’m invisible

I’m sorry you have to see this. if I could starve invisibly, I would. my son’s surgeon worships ventriloquy. do you dream of the sleep you’ve already gotten? or of a thing so sad it gives birth? my abuser talks as if one can lose track of a mouth. in god’s favorite book, my ghost gets a hobby.

a woman
with a handsaw
whose rabbits
dream dove

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