May 2015
from self-published collection Misreckon (December 2014)
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/misreckon/paperback/product-21954246.html
respite
history is a timeline of appetite. I have rubber bands at the ready for when my mother yawns. I cover my baby brother like a grenade. he was born without the potential for further muscle tone. father calls what I do context. I appear like a bruise into a delayed game of hot potato. my sister’s hands are an oven mitt’s dream. I know you’re a hitchhiker and your girlfriend a cannibal but here we **** our thumbs.
ward
the zero courage
it takes
to be
in pain. or to be
for that matter
born. it has devoured
by now
my son’s
vow
of silence. but he had
didn’t he
a moment
while the animal
ate.
clear heads
while smoking a cigar in the shadow of a nervous minotaur, my father wrote the book on moral isolation. in it, he predicted there would be a television show about hoarders and that it would turn god into a sign from god. my mother read the book cover to cover during her fourth and fastest delivery. if there were edits, she kept them to herself and put his name beside hers on seasonally produced slim volumes of absolute shyness.
fascinations of the upright
above
a ramshackle
transmitter
is my father’s
bright
mind.
the angel’s mouth is a mouth to feed.
a man
packs a baby
in snow.
shitstorm
he beats the mother and calls it practice. the washer breaks and he throws the clothes into a full tub and stomps on them while smoking a cigarette. he provokes my image to send him back to his rightful nose. my thick skull is high on my spit.
debut
the mechanics of the beheading begin in isolation.
exiled from what it bumps into, a form
aches
for scarecrow.
my mother’s dream doesn’t burn.
skip
the boy balances a basketball on his head outside his father’s bar. his mother is somewhere a girl set to play the moon in her school’s version of talent night. his sister is giving birth so calmly her midwife is a male blown away by the fact that it’s only her second time wearing the blindfold I wore to fish. his brother is in therapy to process the loss of others who think we’re gods when we smoke.
nuclei
my mother as a young woman once attempted
in the car of the train her father took to work
to eat her hands.
it was a story she put an end to
but not before
I lost a tooth
putting my baby
brother’s
feet
in my mouth
to keep
them warm.
my brother as a baby
was far
too small. one might say
he had the brain
of a snake.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/misreckon/paperback/product-21954246.html
respite
history is a timeline of appetite. I have rubber bands at the ready for when my mother yawns. I cover my baby brother like a grenade. he was born without the potential for further muscle tone. father calls what I do context. I appear like a bruise into a delayed game of hot potato. my sister’s hands are an oven mitt’s dream. I know you’re a hitchhiker and your girlfriend a cannibal but here we **** our thumbs.
ward
the zero courage
it takes
to be
in pain. or to be
for that matter
born. it has devoured
by now
my son’s
vow
of silence. but he had
didn’t he
a moment
while the animal
ate.
clear heads
while smoking a cigar in the shadow of a nervous minotaur, my father wrote the book on moral isolation. in it, he predicted there would be a television show about hoarders and that it would turn god into a sign from god. my mother read the book cover to cover during her fourth and fastest delivery. if there were edits, she kept them to herself and put his name beside hers on seasonally produced slim volumes of absolute shyness.
fascinations of the upright
above
a ramshackle
transmitter
is my father’s
bright
mind.
the angel’s mouth is a mouth to feed.
a man
packs a baby
in snow.
shitstorm
he beats the mother and calls it practice. the washer breaks and he throws the clothes into a full tub and stomps on them while smoking a cigarette. he provokes my image to send him back to his rightful nose. my thick skull is high on my spit.
debut
the mechanics of the beheading begin in isolation.
exiled from what it bumps into, a form
aches
for scarecrow.
my mother’s dream doesn’t burn.
skip
the boy balances a basketball on his head outside his father’s bar. his mother is somewhere a girl set to play the moon in her school’s version of talent night. his sister is giving birth so calmly her midwife is a male blown away by the fact that it’s only her second time wearing the blindfold I wore to fish. his brother is in therapy to process the loss of others who think we’re gods when we smoke.
nuclei
my mother as a young woman once attempted
in the car of the train her father took to work
to eat her hands.
it was a story she put an end to
but not before
I lost a tooth
putting my baby
brother’s
feet
in my mouth
to keep
them warm.
my brother as a baby
was far
too small. one might say
he had the brain
of a snake.
