May 2015
from* The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake (September 2013)
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-blood-you-dont-see-is-fake/paperback/product-21966942.html
raiment
we are not here
to enshroud
the myth
of the woman
who swims
naked-
we are here
might our sons
mourn
the stickman’s
belief
that his wife
went to pieces
praise act
you pull a reddish pup like a sled through a town that surrounds you.
I think you are my brother but more importantly you think I am yours.
you feel not like yourself but like a tooth you belong to.
up ahead, we work together.
I pop myself in the mouth with our father to achieve a crisis of no faith.
our father?
he is made mostly of the words that display my words.
proof
my birdcage was a stuffed bear and my bird was a moth. oddly the bird protected my sister from knowing she was molested and oddly its cage promised my brother he would again be gay. oddly only because it was planned. I was more spelled than born and consented often to being sounded out. I carried with me a grey blanket that I held like a curtain when asked. my eyes were peepholes I had to avoid.
all
the first time I can recall a teapot whistling in the manner I’d imagined
a teapot
to whistle
my brother was cutting himself in the tub, gingerly, a test run…
-
the whistling scared the **** out of him, the bejesus
-
being made of nothing allowed brother
to volunteer
in New Orleans
after Katrina
he opened a few refrigerators
that’s all it took
-
without my brother, I’d be in his words
beside myself
some ****** eared stranger mucking up a white door
listening
as if to a radio
announcing the missing
blow up dolls
by name
funereal
as some things incorrectly have wings, we stamp a chicken into the hood of a cop car. the groundskeeper on break inside the church wonders aloud how much is left of the lord. a boy not part of our boyhood bikes over to us with his feet he’s named individually show and tell. the cop chuckles but straightens out when he sees what I’ve made of my hand. the boy says careful it might stay that way for good.
infant travelogue
mittens on the forepaws of a dead wolf.
one must be serious
about art
but also
flirty.
I will raise you as my own.
I will make two parts
of your mother’s
passing.
she will live in childbirth.
notes on the saints (iii)
a crookedness within a white cat. a naked boy on crutches. a girl in a pink jumpsuit jogging in place beside a man rolling a tire. all of this says I’ve witnessed my father by himself on a child’s swing ******* two unlit cigarettes. we don’t exist until god begins to worry. our neighbor is an old woman with a gun. she is afraid her color will suddenly change. when she chases my father home I understand the riddle of his cigarettes. around him I pretend to be asleep. I hear him watering a rag and wait for him to press it to my nose and tell me my dreams are bleeding. when a kitten, the head of our white cat would stick to the refrigerator door.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-blood-you-dont-see-is-fake/paperback/product-21966942.html
raiment
we are not here
to enshroud
the myth
of the woman
who swims
naked-
we are here
might our sons
mourn
the stickman’s
belief
that his wife
went to pieces
praise act
you pull a reddish pup like a sled through a town that surrounds you.
I think you are my brother but more importantly you think I am yours.
you feel not like yourself but like a tooth you belong to.
up ahead, we work together.
I pop myself in the mouth with our father to achieve a crisis of no faith.
our father?
he is made mostly of the words that display my words.
proof
my birdcage was a stuffed bear and my bird was a moth. oddly the bird protected my sister from knowing she was molested and oddly its cage promised my brother he would again be gay. oddly only because it was planned. I was more spelled than born and consented often to being sounded out. I carried with me a grey blanket that I held like a curtain when asked. my eyes were peepholes I had to avoid.
all
the first time I can recall a teapot whistling in the manner I’d imagined
a teapot
to whistle
my brother was cutting himself in the tub, gingerly, a test run…
-
the whistling scared the **** out of him, the bejesus
-
being made of nothing allowed brother
to volunteer
in New Orleans
after Katrina
he opened a few refrigerators
that’s all it took
-
without my brother, I’d be in his words
beside myself
some ****** eared stranger mucking up a white door
listening
as if to a radio
announcing the missing
blow up dolls
by name
funereal
as some things incorrectly have wings, we stamp a chicken into the hood of a cop car. the groundskeeper on break inside the church wonders aloud how much is left of the lord. a boy not part of our boyhood bikes over to us with his feet he’s named individually show and tell. the cop chuckles but straightens out when he sees what I’ve made of my hand. the boy says careful it might stay that way for good.
infant travelogue
mittens on the forepaws of a dead wolf.
one must be serious
about art
but also
flirty.
I will raise you as my own.
I will make two parts
of your mother’s
passing.
she will live in childbirth.
notes on the saints (iii)
a crookedness within a white cat. a naked boy on crutches. a girl in a pink jumpsuit jogging in place beside a man rolling a tire. all of this says I’ve witnessed my father by himself on a child’s swing ******* two unlit cigarettes. we don’t exist until god begins to worry. our neighbor is an old woman with a gun. she is afraid her color will suddenly change. when she chases my father home I understand the riddle of his cigarettes. around him I pretend to be asleep. I hear him watering a rag and wait for him to press it to my nose and tell me my dreams are bleeding. when a kitten, the head of our white cat would stick to the refrigerator door.
