UNKILLABLE ANGEL GOES TO THE CINEMA
poems, Barton Smock
185 pages (hardcover)
September 2026
back cover image by Aidan Smock
in-book illustrations and photographs by
Noah Michael Smock
Jude Smock
Mary Ann Gutierrez
Aidan Smock
Collection is pay-what-you-want. Be sure to include your name/address details in the comment section of payment type. Email bartonsmock@yahoo.com for free PDF if interested in reviewing.
can be purchased via:
paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
Venmo @Barton-Smock-2
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A reading is HERE
6 broken bones, a short film inspired by my collection (57 Letters to Ethan Hawke)
Filmed, selected, and edited by my son Aidan Smock.
Selected by and starring my son Noah Michael Smock.
Selected works from the book:
Letter 071224
Dear Ethan Hawke
In Ohio there is a black frog with a star on its back that no one has ever seen. Men trip each other to death.
Letter 062224
Dear Ethan Hawke
I deleted this letter. This is the new one.
Letter 072324 someone smuggled a bone into heaven
Dear Ethan Hawke
Someone smuggled a bone into heaven.
Letter 062824 voiceovers
Dear Ethan Hawke
Nothing creation makes is as ghostless as a baby. If a being needs rest, then a being can get sick, get better, be killed. Pain keeps the body in the past. I drink in the present.
Letter 071724
Dear Ethan Hawke
I feel I’ve been in the room where I’ll die. My little nod to a flower is god at this hour.
Letter 072524
Dear Ethan Hawke
I am sitting on a diving board with a rabbit in my lap. Most of the rabbit is dead. I try with my shadow to moan through the water. A stillness stretches god.
~
Book info HERE
Rate the film on letterboxd HERE
I have all the words that have gone missing to say that I am thankful for being in the August 2021 run of Poem-A-Day at poets.org as guest edited by Kazim Ali
Read the poem here
about the poem:
“I can't speak for all fathers, but my own fathering is littered with necessary and fake finalities. As such, I wrote this poem by hand on a small piece of paper while worrying about the long and short lives of my children. In the spacing of the poem, I tried to honor the little room I'd given myself for its projected concerns.”
Reading younger writers is how I cry for my mother
I am in treegrief love with a being created by its kidnapper
God got to die with no one around. My son will soon reach the highest age he's allowed to be healthy at. I was a boy pointing a capgun at roadkill. I plan my return. I plan it knowing.
Your mother saw you in no dream
and your father
threw a rabbit
at a tornado
Alien
with insomnia
the rabbit
had a chance
I was born in the shape of my death.
I got there first, I'd say.
To god after god
until it got old
God cuts himself in Eden but this isn’t a dream. I eat near my son. My son cannot imagine himself beyond yesterday. My happiness for him trails off like a language the brain can decide on. I worry my pretty little head over the amount of skin god goes through daily. Yearly I sleep for a baby or two.
Nothingness surrounds its own escape. God a godless ghost stuck in a thirst trap. Death has one shape but the lonely are fast learners. There were things in my mouth put there to check on my mouth. My son is as young as a hoax. As god needing rest. As not wanting to eat you but wearing your clothes.
A cannibal fasting during a lightning storm deletes his imagined mother from a drug company computer in Ohio
I add three lines of code to what I do in my sleep to keep my son sick
There are writers who crawl out of god to tell us about the legs of god
Love is for the crucified and kids from the waist up
My kids shoot each other
It's okay it's school
I could describe it, but can't
go through
your angel
change
(a mirror
for the lonely
two mirrors
for the not
((a cop
belly up
in boy
life
