Sep 2015
from The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake (poems, barton smock, September 2013)
[wilderness mantra]
sister Cain falls in love with me through her brother.
I physically blame her with both hands.
she has left my brother’s lips
on the lord.
I try to kiss her at a baseball game
but am drunk
and kiss instead
my male
abuser.
violence begins with me.
[NICU]
in the story, a newborn is placed in a mailbox. we know of no harm and the story itself is very casual. an angel tells us the job of an angel is to fly in front of the master when the master is ****. we try to hang on every word. the mailbox is the only mailbox in heaven. our questions turn our stomachs. some of us become hormonal and some of us identify pedophiles by future rote. we head home in a pack. a siren behind us wails a moment before being joined.
~
from father, footrace, fistfight (poems, barton smock, June 2014)
[object permanence]
rabbit
named
vertigo
[my son the ******]
online I find instructions on how to make my own scarecrow. I wake my sister and have her put on her pajamas while I take the overcoat my father is using for a blanket. when we’re an error of a mile from home I have to push the ATV with my sister on it. she is crying about flooding and I’m telling her what the scarecrow will look like. she wants it to have a cape. because my son isn’t born yet, there’s not much to like.
[orison]
gaze upon our father
create a woman
and suddenly
know
to leave us
[collapse]
how
on a clear day
my father
is the face
of absence.
how what I mean
cuts the finger
my mother
sips.
how porch blood
is not the same blood
the body
faints with.
how copperhead, how rattlesnake, how lisp
says I myth
my sister
who is still
vanishing
to shoplift
god
from the thunderstorm
we gave her.
~
from The Women You Take From Your Brother (poems, barton smock, August 2014)
[weaponry]
after passing many dogs
with more skin
than fur, that seem to be
the starving men
of my dreams
if the starving men
of my dreams
had been brought
to the same place
to die
if that place
were me,
the man who sold
my brother
a gun
goes
as a father
praying over
a solitary
son
to his knees
in front
of a larger cage
and I see
the smallest elephant
and I keep
seeing it
as if I’m the only
one who can
though I know
it’s there, the sound it makes
like nothing sick, nothing animal-
I am not the brother
I’m the size of.
[spoils]
a distraction that doesn’t explode. I’d say children but nostalgia is still a child. head, I need a volunteer. god’s reply in the form of a sext. a brick taken for a sponge by a bout of sleepwalking in someone I can shower.
[flatfoot]
the missing man’s yo yo
between the hours
of this and that a.m.
was no doubt cared for
by meadow mice
our estimate would be
by all of them
what a service
they’ve provided
we would advise
forget the tree, the tire swing, and with these mice
forget the man
~
from Misreckon (poems, barton smock, December 2014)
[end psalm]
god had an earache and I heard thunder. I learned to shrink into the smallness of my brain. I associated money with my father’s funny bone. my mother with the dual church of hide and seek. I went on to have a son with special needs. he cried once. cried milk.
[form psalm]
I find the boy’s name on a list in another boy’s diary. a gun goes off in a dream I don’t have anymore. the animal gets between my son and my son’s imaginary friend. the root of its insomnia is not man but the fear of personification. god’s gone when the story starts. to war, to war.
[inquiry psalm]
when it comes to humoring
me
by name
my memories
draw a blank.
I had a daughter
and three
sons.
my hands
could’ve been
the hands
of an umpire.
in the untouched church
of suicide
was the untouched
church
of *******.
it’s like seeing
a television
on tv. the comedians
and their failed
sisters.
do your thoughts
still take
the temperature
of god?
~
from Eating the Animal Back to Life (poems, barton smock, July 2015)
[sandbox]
even with her fingers in her ears, she can hear the toy horse whipped. if we don’t have food, we can’t pray. my father was hired for his quickness, his hands
to salt
the rain. grief is a guard dog from the permanent circus.
[sightings]
****, kid, your poems. I took a page from your father’s thesaurus and played scrabble with god. I came back knowing your name as code for omission. your mother didn’t break a chair over my back because the chair didn’t break. I worked it off in a building from the wrong twin city. after that, my homeless jailer became your brother’s landlord. your brother he played citizen’s parole to my arrest. borrowed my hat on account it wasn’t full of money. like most men, we were in love. he had a note he’d written that would appear before a big fight it said don’t let my suicide beat you to death.
[ones]
the book is a mourning vessel for what its reader stands to lose. I have a father for every type of silence.
[wilderness mantra]
sister Cain falls in love with me through her brother.
I physically blame her with both hands.
she has left my brother’s lips
on the lord.
I try to kiss her at a baseball game
but am drunk
and kiss instead
my male
abuser.
violence begins with me.
[NICU]
in the story, a newborn is placed in a mailbox. we know of no harm and the story itself is very casual. an angel tells us the job of an angel is to fly in front of the master when the master is ****. we try to hang on every word. the mailbox is the only mailbox in heaven. our questions turn our stomachs. some of us become hormonal and some of us identify pedophiles by future rote. we head home in a pack. a siren behind us wails a moment before being joined.
~
from father, footrace, fistfight (poems, barton smock, June 2014)
[object permanence]
rabbit
named
vertigo
[my son the ******]
online I find instructions on how to make my own scarecrow. I wake my sister and have her put on her pajamas while I take the overcoat my father is using for a blanket. when we’re an error of a mile from home I have to push the ATV with my sister on it. she is crying about flooding and I’m telling her what the scarecrow will look like. she wants it to have a cape. because my son isn’t born yet, there’s not much to like.
[orison]
gaze upon our father
create a woman
and suddenly
know
to leave us
[collapse]
how
on a clear day
my father
is the face
of absence.
how what I mean
cuts the finger
my mother
sips.
how porch blood
is not the same blood
the body
faints with.
how copperhead, how rattlesnake, how lisp
says I myth
my sister
who is still
vanishing
to shoplift
god
from the thunderstorm
we gave her.
~
from The Women You Take From Your Brother (poems, barton smock, August 2014)
[weaponry]
after passing many dogs
with more skin
than fur, that seem to be
the starving men
of my dreams
if the starving men
of my dreams
had been brought
to the same place
to die
if that place
were me,
the man who sold
my brother
a gun
goes
as a father
praying over
a solitary
son
to his knees
in front
of a larger cage
and I see
the smallest elephant
and I keep
seeing it
as if I’m the only
one who can
though I know
it’s there, the sound it makes
like nothing sick, nothing animal-
I am not the brother
I’m the size of.
[spoils]
a distraction that doesn’t explode. I’d say children but nostalgia is still a child. head, I need a volunteer. god’s reply in the form of a sext. a brick taken for a sponge by a bout of sleepwalking in someone I can shower.
[flatfoot]
the missing man’s yo yo
between the hours
of this and that a.m.
was no doubt cared for
by meadow mice
our estimate would be
by all of them
what a service
they’ve provided
we would advise
forget the tree, the tire swing, and with these mice
forget the man
~
from Misreckon (poems, barton smock, December 2014)
[end psalm]
god had an earache and I heard thunder. I learned to shrink into the smallness of my brain. I associated money with my father’s funny bone. my mother with the dual church of hide and seek. I went on to have a son with special needs. he cried once. cried milk.
[form psalm]
I find the boy’s name on a list in another boy’s diary. a gun goes off in a dream I don’t have anymore. the animal gets between my son and my son’s imaginary friend. the root of its insomnia is not man but the fear of personification. god’s gone when the story starts. to war, to war.
[inquiry psalm]
when it comes to humoring
me
by name
my memories
draw a blank.
I had a daughter
and three
sons.
my hands
could’ve been
the hands
of an umpire.
in the untouched church
of suicide
was the untouched
church
of *******.
it’s like seeing
a television
on tv. the comedians
and their failed
sisters.
do your thoughts
still take
the temperature
of god?
~
from Eating the Animal Back to Life (poems, barton smock, July 2015)
[sandbox]
even with her fingers in her ears, she can hear the toy horse whipped. if we don’t have food, we can’t pray. my father was hired for his quickness, his hands
to salt
the rain. grief is a guard dog from the permanent circus.
[sightings]
****, kid, your poems. I took a page from your father’s thesaurus and played scrabble with god. I came back knowing your name as code for omission. your mother didn’t break a chair over my back because the chair didn’t break. I worked it off in a building from the wrong twin city. after that, my homeless jailer became your brother’s landlord. your brother he played citizen’s parole to my arrest. borrowed my hat on account it wasn’t full of money. like most men, we were in love. he had a note he’d written that would appear before a big fight it said don’t let my suicide beat you to death.
[ones]
the book is a mourning vessel for what its reader stands to lose. I have a father for every type of silence.
