drift collecting Barton Smock *** drift collecting *** your signature where you wrote it on mother's knee      your resume of smokestacks when did the gods have time      and were they gentle putting each black flute on each      grey town      delirious when the lights went out when mother would pull cocoons from the oven      tell us to stop kicking, go outside catch me a butterfly      your return   clothed in kerosene your friends arriving trading the three known words between them looking in your mouth   an umbrella.    a bra.    a harp.    whole islands made of amnesia.    of jar upon jar of silt where women      what would you say like jelly cigarettes for everything save exhaustion      a deposit     of skulls in the bone tide      where for a moment she'd put down the rolling pin put her hand in the hole at the back of your neck and pretend it was her you were breathing on      you     look like the author of this paperback worn in the front of her jeans,    she's     alone in a park kneeling on a blanket      I'd imagine     not even the ants are on their way.     father      tell me the belly has an eye, that pupils are made of sand, that when I flick my ash at the ocean      I won't find     a shell      rocking        at the wall     of your castle.