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By Aleathia Drehmer, on 01-01-2008 00:00

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Published in : OW! Site Content, Lit Circus


BartonSmock

***
cigarettes
***
 
the second
to last
man
on earth
sets a gas can
by a hissing
tire
and struggles
a box
from his pocket
 
     not knowing
 
how many
are left.
 
 
 
continued...
 

***
debtors
***
 
was you could
wrap a wooden spoon
in aluminum
and press it to the tongue
of an infant.
 
was you could smoke
at work
and claim
the blackest
ring
 
was circling
bread.
 
was you could mark
 
the day
your mother
had a dollar
and wings.
 
was your father
would visit
tap his golden tooth
on the bars
 
     was she would turn
and love him.
 
 
 
 
***
rent
***
 
 
where the night drags
on the one light
left on
 
I stay
 
to smoke
in a bright square
at the building
I’ve been chosen
by.
 
a man
I often see
 
yawns open
the window
I am under.
 
the distant lake
he looks for
moans over
its shadow
as the long
tenants
 
of self
stretch to occupy
a dark whimsy.
 
 
 
***
and to hunger less quickly we’ll go
***
 
come winter
an off duty cop
carries a heavy bread
into a clearing
and sighs 
the slow cut
 
of river
a rock agrees to.
 
the earthen grip
on a mother’s
good knife
 
loosens.
 
if we could store
the children
in the bellies
of nuns.
 
or
two by two
eat.
 
 
 
 
***
upland glyphs
***
 
woman not womanly.
 
living’s dry gesture
at the open gown of the sick.
 
scraped by leaves a body.
 
a second son
in a blanket grandmother makes.
 
of god we’ve been speaking.
 
hospitals when we were younger.
 
the tree where snakeskin.
 
hope not for.  but for
 
statues of them.
 
live in a dent.  the electric
 
left in a crater.
 
we release, outside, a balloon.
 
bury in the land an arm made of earth.
 
     to curtains as fingertips
 
of babies
to scars.
 
click in the hall of yesterday with.
 
heels of irretrievable mercy. 
 
hope not for.  but for
 
statues of them.
 
     an agreeable virgin in stirrups.  a cradle
 
taken by birds.


Barton Smock lives in Columbus, Ohio, and tries to write place well.  His three children can usually be found behind his ear; his wife, under any blank page.  He is 31 years old, and for the last 4 he has been reading the same book by different authors.  If he had to pick somebody to be right about things, he would pick William Stafford or, depending on the day, one of his brothers.  He has been published sporadically online, most recently here at The Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal and at Merge Poetry.



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