Abraham Smith

Rabbit, Sing Us In

to vermillion hats marooned

upon sentimental nails

scabbed some with seafoam

slouching loom

woofing cinnamon

churn that haunch crank

and fresh outsetless owlet swings

low loaf old toe mouth

cartoon cat bread neck

like this it's guillotine's

brethren light loot out

one wind mechanical

why joist bird o save me

suture stretch pants pleat

egress bucket galleon

trueler taller there are none

ladder ladder loves the dust

til it don't then up

now stooping

is it

kingly

else or i am goner

one gaghand down

wide-eyed wisdom

o joist bird alloy

o sky salve slather

yr long and yr lovely

such fernal gill throat furniture

undulant and verdant

talk frogstack neck trill

talk turtle winter pond

muck stack talk guinness

pinted ostrich throat cartoon

cept it's frog frog frog frog

fair will dark tree hotel

free crane neck spindle

let's up gas the couch that

let's going and yesterday

to some florida of moon now

where the living and dead play

whittled punctate

legbone golfclub whistles

talk mad cloudages

veined in heart attack light

rhythm of shit country tequila dreams

pup on shine stone

suture bird ladder up

red the head red the eyes

by way of the blood dream

by terrible shake this infant stillness

it's hotter than hiway milk mama

where if only we are good

we'll one day leashless be

maddeners of sea

waves salt cake waves

rabbit upon rabbits

chaos of leap feet

and footnoted hearts

drum solo freak freaks

gravid dust unsettling

why soon enough sleeps

yes soon enough sleeps

mmm soon enough sleeps

calls to question

why don't frame shudder

hangover clotheshanger that

light frozen conductored

into something like crane

dippin insides lured

insidious car lock coaxed

atom bomb erect out

from the eyeholes of a dead man

unpopular in his demise

as he was in his whiffling life

ash to grass and may we be

​

moved through mannered

mulctless guts of ungulates

not some two stroke blare rooster no

struttin like stone

comet shit freak for a home

and the steamin cold shoulder after

ambulatory bivalve hopechest

from above any straight

line unshields its curl

its sadness grain

old shill shoal win-

some and cranes

impossible that one

lifting as they do the cornbread

and the county grinner too

gonna plant your chaff in awkward litmus

talk alphabet of socks now

frozen to weapon

on the line i have in mind

personal vintage aerial ladders

and to step 'em down nothing

but my eyes and fingers

the ones upon the others

the heart walks shy shed

the frog fly swallow swallow

the drunk pray burp only

the egg pulse cry beak

the diaphanous dark sick of it

so crane the bucket up

from the heartless well

so prime a stately monster mind for real

soda water precious water freshest water

you yes the pulse mulled

you can of beets on the dash heart you

cardboard pizza by grease bled thru on the dash heart you

energy slump silo dick on the dash heart you

secondhand dashboard

dead gum blue

carry one cracked in the backseat

​

just in case sweet must

cathect an up ahead

looking back that's

pure peril

passion play

endless white blood delight

annulled in

salt's empathic charge

can't seem cease

juicing fossils

in the neck twist of all

i did not know how say

these willowy risers say

this fig leaf tent vinyl sky

breakable when

beyond is for life

how arrow hollow bone

borne upon regret's exhale

back when we

barely knew rudder from plough

or how to throat sun

bunch of thistledown blown

against wall's

faithful fails

for wings unfurled

i find i stow

where skulls are

honey is

wrist and

ransom deep

​__________________________________________________________________________________________

Abraham Smith

What are 2 - 3 books (regardless of genre) that you've read over the last year or less that really blew your hair back? ​

Tyehimba Jess: OLIO

Gennady Aygi: Field-Russia

Safiya Sinclair: Cannibal

Who is someone you admire who does work that you feel really benefits your community, and what kind of work is it that they do?

I spend summers in Wisconsin on the farm. I admire Linda Detra's spirit in Rusk County. Sometimes heckled for her work for the Democratic party, she more than perseveres.

What was the last gift—that wasn’t a book—you gave someone ?

I gave my niece Pippin some frog socks and a frog shirt: the shirt says, This is just my human costume: I am actually a frog.