Suck Out the Poison: American Sonnets for the Apocalypse

By Barnabas Smith

Suck Out the Poison: American Sonnets for the Apocalypse continues poet Barnabas Smith's use of American sonnets to capture the spirit of the post-2020 era. Just like

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Fistful of Words
• Release date: Jul 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088175187

Barnabas Smith

Barnabas Smith is a poet, illustrator, and designer born and raised in Southern California. He has independently released four collections of poetry. He currently resides in Colorado with his two sons.

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@barnabasprime

These poems are a continuation of a series of sonnets I wrote at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those poems were my way of processing what was going on around the world and within me.

Those poems can be found in Serenade the Fire. That collection ended the day before the murder of George Floyd.

This collection is in response to that event and everything else that unfolded after, around the country and within my family.

It works like poison moving through our veins

Until it finds our most vital organs

Destroys them from the inside, carving them

Until all that is left is hollow shell

Of what they had been. What they could have been

lost to this total poisonous ruin

If only someone had warned us proper

If only we had known what we had done

Ignorant that it would take one apple

To cripple our most critical systems