Short film for my collection (57 Letters to Ethan Hawke, or I wanted to stop saying god)
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
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TELL 5PM IT'S GOD SOMEWHERE
poems, Barton Smock
125 pages
October 2025
cover image by Noah Michael 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.
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A reading, 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.”
I leave the car open and a neighbor sends their kid over to steal my alcohol. I let the kid get pretty far before pretending to point a gun at my head. The kid's head explodes a year from now. Your now, not mine. I'm not the father in every poem. It's okay to sleep like deer. Here comes that car, kid. My now is that fetus curled into a tire swing. The small amount of force you can't get back.
I didn't build that
God, time, and touch are all I write about. Sleep covers each. This poem is for the nonconsecutive years my kids won’t have me. Angels were created when god asked an angel about addiction. I write about angels too I guess. Imagine caring about drugs in her system. I don’t look at stars but will when I’m dying.
I wish for you
that you can die
thinking
on your death
The movies
got away
some
went first
The writing
suffered
so what
I stayed
as sober
as a spider
in an appetite
not long
for god
and the writing
had a silent
mother
or went
in a mother
silent
oh most
thorough
of autofictions
oh doom
scrolling
son of my son's
suicide
have you a part
for the speaking
father
I'm not
here to be sad
I'm there
and my brothers
bike
up a hill
that can feel
an ant
die
You're the churchbell
of your dream
Rivers, rivers, rivers
poems, Triin Paja
Sarabande Books, 2026
Winner of the Sarabande Books chapbook prize
Salt, crow, let us be recognized by the warnings that turn us to symbol. Triin Paja is a poet of hermetic intimacies whose verse braids us into the miracle sickness of a world so unmoved that it matures early might its lateness give us fields of mothers and fathers looking for parentage. Paja’s chapbook Rivers, rivers, rivers is a heralding of the anti-hereditary that answers answer with the outside tending of death as a hair grown to be studied on an earth of outside losses. Its violent inquiry houses a peace that names the natural after the animal indigenous to occurrence. Left inside of the work, one will not be abandoned.
A rock goes through a frog in Ohio and the non-addicts hear a churchbell. My son is sick and my son is sick online. To be a thing born is to know that god has never seen a face.
high in front of my family
sharing
with a doll
a thunderstorm,
the hair in my stomach turns white.
A bee fills with blood
can’t
find its mom
Prayer a tender spoon lost in its care for the shy mouth
Food how angels enter death
Of all
the suicidal
people to be
what made
you think
kingsoftrain 