Why Eat Why Kill

Abraham Smith

how hunger boy
mercer must you
brain crane lay

over lap one
dream broom
person starved

down chaff
rain pencil
shaving ego

peck of
pimpled flesh
on fire

eat burnt crane
eat burnt crane
eat burnt crane

who your gods then
while you wait
for the soupbird to unshade yr life

in who the cleated teeth
of rain
in mist

in whom the fired
sibilant remnants
a passing

storm’s little
unsuccessful denials
of fire

inside every song
another song
fruit teaches this

white sun flesh
the seed at the breast
thread wrestled button the

crane
burnt
eaten

can’t stack a day’s
strength a night’s
rest at the unravel hotel

truly hungry fools
dream too but
not of confluences

not of gardenias
not of pedigrees
not the stony feats of insomniac sentinels

mothered
by the
killing maze

milk like junk wool
milk like gauze
milk like hesitancy

might as well
eat your own cane
god and crawl

from "Crow"

in his wide wide palm the reigns loose as a foundering
pulse the sky gone
the color of the dying too
and the night kneels
on the throat of the morning
the turkey is clocking and
the night is a preservationist
the morning is a revisionist and
the child is erasing her skin
with a toe thick school eraser for
the moon is the idea of the bone in theoretical x-ray
the clenched jaws of the stars
the doctor’s hunched under
run thick cold sweat thoughts of
the metals of air war asleep

Abraham Smith

2014

for yam sir: elevated blues

This poem is from a longer work, written in dedication to Abraham Smith's canine companion, Rodney.

probably the heat in the bama walMART parkin lot 
curls the edges of the masking taped penciled on 
a half crapped crate baby RODNEY stretchy snow legs 
and sweet potato continent blotches down 
his back LOST aka abandoned 
as the hoarder's drawers of one rub off

Abraham Smith

2011

every little meth

runt crouched in
the dark part of the culvert
every sugar road
half a bag shy
of the flour roads
every here we go crow
spoiled at the touch
of gun holes in signs
love is inside
light wet seeds
nailed into
the crawlspace
between eyetooth
and barred goon

Abraham Smith

2007

Poems

Why Eat Why Kill

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from "Crow"

for yam sir: elevated blues

every little meth

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Why Eat Why Kill

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