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from father, footrace, fistfight (selected poems, Barton Smock, June 2014)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/father-footrace-fistfight/paperback/product-21672373.html


[the minimal class]

I orbit
the idea
of an animal
not thinking
of itself.

to err
is hunger.


[cipher]

aware of my body
as if my body
is on a raft.

a creaky deceit
I call
rafting in the ****.

    last night in a very safe garage
I promised a friend
I’d mention
the moon
in the period following
my last
idea.

my body eats me.
god dangles the body of my son
in front of my son’s
next
memory.

some are born
born-again.

    current trends include cloning.
the first person to recall dying
will be held aloft.


[patience]

the black market is a state of mind.  I smoke a joint in a barn and worry I will see a barn owl that will crush my barn owl dreams.  my worry walks me three miles where I meet a woman trying to sell a book in a graveyard.  I trade her the memory of our previous trade for the book she tells me is shy.  my other possession is a neglected baby.


[sequestration]

a person goes dark.  night shifts disappear.  a lone panic capsizes the anatomically correct.  men fill up on mouthwash.  men float.  women bite their tongues in half before they can say women and children.  insomnia becomes more than the over-hyped novelization of insomnia.  a boy draws a cutlass in a broom closet and is told he can’t sleep.  I begin to want more from a diagnosis.  a kite being flown in hell by a son gone pro.