Jun 2015
from The Women You Take From Your Brother (Aug 2014)
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-women-you-take-from-your-brother/hardcover/product-21988530.html
taunts
death is never early. take the first bite of every meal in front of a mirror. chase the kid while pulling a plastic bag over your head. invent a sibling schoolmates blind. know poverty, know moon. shampoo the elderly from a distance. baby no one. they have looked like hell since before you were born.
in the rain
the woman she is holding an umbrella over the man she is yelling at. the man he is blowing into the bowl he’s made of his hands. a boy sits at their feet with his back to us and is bringing what we can guess is a toy to his mouth. you joke he is laboring to light a cigarette. in the rain.
locals
the father tells his children how he is not surprised by how much they’ve grown. they are healthy, after all, and he is not death. the mother wonders how it is common she lose the baby when she is not the last to have it. my name is silent but no letter in my name is or the letters in my name are not silent but the word they make is. perhaps her pain is political. her pain is god’s.
portals
while churched in the sounds of my brothers ******* on spaghetti, I had two words for ghetto and poverty. I was able to crush only those beetles slowed by your father’s fleeting shame. we found so many stones it became impossible to label a single one as oddly shaped. logic was that if the horse hung itself it would leave a note. I had my doubts.
while churched in the sounds of my brothers ******* on poverty, I had two beetles mother looked for. you were so ghetto my other friends rubbed at me as if I’d come out of my father. logic was that if a horse hung itself it would leave a note.
not here: the stone that heard my baby’s heart.
wartime
my friend approaches the microphone with a grocery bag on his head. I don’t know how this will turn out. not long ago he ran over a fourteen year old girl minutes after she vandalized a stop sign. my friend has lived everyday since and everyday previous with the fact she survived. I phoned his wife recently but she had already left him for what he calls a microcosm. I am hopeful I can love what he’s done with his hair. he sent me this flower for mine.
catholicon
into the wood
a man
whose daughter’s
hair
is a ghost
fighting a ghost
for her head.
whose daughter
has not slept.
such cures
the town
talks.
put the sick
every morning
on a different
porch.
use
the same
nail.
if one is awake
**** a crow
or *****
a stop sign.
empty imagery
i.
Adam had no memory of his first wife. as created, he would look at Eve all day and feel nothing.
ii.
the vacation house was found to be owned by another family. in it, my mother resisted arrest.
iii.
my father was born with six fingers on his right hand and seven on his left. he was not fond of either hand until later in life when the grandchildren asked him at different times during their visits if he had been tortured.
iv.
God created the world because he couldn’t do it on his own. ah, note to self, *******. person is place. I might’ve killed a man had I not been poking holes in a poem by Barton Smock.
v.
my brother says it’s part of his condition that he can only explain himself from the waist down. he says he feels horrible in the back of his head and wants me to take a look. he says I don’t know what darkness is. before I can play doctor he remembers he has a story he wants me to write. the outline of the story is off site. in the opening scene brother recalls that a young man is blowing dust from a human skull made of plastic because it’s all the narrator can afford.
vi.
the head itself was an afterthought. had god not allowed the soul to come up for air, beauty would have been spared our invention.
vii.
a single mother is a twofold mirage. please argue above her quietly. her legs collapse. her child comes first.
viii.
your sister is the only person I’ve recorded to have been born without a gift. I was told this in confidence by an angel masquerading as a small animal. the size of which escapes me.
ix.
I am aware a sparrow exists. not in a spiritual vacuum. people are another hell.
x.
excuse my friend his earlier joy in saying who do I have to **** to get ****** around here. at age 19 a man exploded beside my friend and my friend went quiet. to his grave thinking his own bomb malfunctioned.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-women-you-take-from-your-brother/hardcover/product-21988530.html
taunts
death is never early. take the first bite of every meal in front of a mirror. chase the kid while pulling a plastic bag over your head. invent a sibling schoolmates blind. know poverty, know moon. shampoo the elderly from a distance. baby no one. they have looked like hell since before you were born.
in the rain
the woman she is holding an umbrella over the man she is yelling at. the man he is blowing into the bowl he’s made of his hands. a boy sits at their feet with his back to us and is bringing what we can guess is a toy to his mouth. you joke he is laboring to light a cigarette. in the rain.
locals
the father tells his children how he is not surprised by how much they’ve grown. they are healthy, after all, and he is not death. the mother wonders how it is common she lose the baby when she is not the last to have it. my name is silent but no letter in my name is or the letters in my name are not silent but the word they make is. perhaps her pain is political. her pain is god’s.
portals
while churched in the sounds of my brothers ******* on spaghetti, I had two words for ghetto and poverty. I was able to crush only those beetles slowed by your father’s fleeting shame. we found so many stones it became impossible to label a single one as oddly shaped. logic was that if the horse hung itself it would leave a note. I had my doubts.
while churched in the sounds of my brothers ******* on poverty, I had two beetles mother looked for. you were so ghetto my other friends rubbed at me as if I’d come out of my father. logic was that if a horse hung itself it would leave a note.
not here: the stone that heard my baby’s heart.
wartime
my friend approaches the microphone with a grocery bag on his head. I don’t know how this will turn out. not long ago he ran over a fourteen year old girl minutes after she vandalized a stop sign. my friend has lived everyday since and everyday previous with the fact she survived. I phoned his wife recently but she had already left him for what he calls a microcosm. I am hopeful I can love what he’s done with his hair. he sent me this flower for mine.
catholicon
into the wood
a man
whose daughter’s
hair
is a ghost
fighting a ghost
for her head.
whose daughter
has not slept.
such cures
the town
talks.
put the sick
every morning
on a different
porch.
use
the same
nail.
if one is awake
**** a crow
or *****
a stop sign.
empty imagery
i.
Adam had no memory of his first wife. as created, he would look at Eve all day and feel nothing.
ii.
the vacation house was found to be owned by another family. in it, my mother resisted arrest.
iii.
my father was born with six fingers on his right hand and seven on his left. he was not fond of either hand until later in life when the grandchildren asked him at different times during their visits if he had been tortured.
iv.
God created the world because he couldn’t do it on his own. ah, note to self, *******. person is place. I might’ve killed a man had I not been poking holes in a poem by Barton Smock.
v.
my brother says it’s part of his condition that he can only explain himself from the waist down. he says he feels horrible in the back of his head and wants me to take a look. he says I don’t know what darkness is. before I can play doctor he remembers he has a story he wants me to write. the outline of the story is off site. in the opening scene brother recalls that a young man is blowing dust from a human skull made of plastic because it’s all the narrator can afford.
vi.
the head itself was an afterthought. had god not allowed the soul to come up for air, beauty would have been spared our invention.
vii.
a single mother is a twofold mirage. please argue above her quietly. her legs collapse. her child comes first.
viii.
your sister is the only person I’ve recorded to have been born without a gift. I was told this in confidence by an angel masquerading as a small animal. the size of which escapes me.
ix.
I am aware a sparrow exists. not in a spiritual vacuum. people are another hell.
x.
excuse my friend his earlier joy in saying who do I have to **** to get ****** around here. at age 19 a man exploded beside my friend and my friend went quiet. to his grave thinking his own bomb malfunctioned.
