TELL 5PM IT'S GOD SOMEWHERE
poems, Barton Smock
125 pages
October 2025
cover image by Noah Michael Smock
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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.”
They are about eating and sleeping and/or eating and sleeping in front of god. I should have been clearer. Moth after moth, the writing left me. I put my nudes in tornado country mailboxes. This wasn’t dangerous. I had a car and I had a gun. I still can’t see myself doing it. An angel can be killed by two things. A baby is one.
My naked brother
drinking from my hand
before his scene with the microscope
I can begin
to describe it
The chewed-up bird in a repaired egg
A perfect dog carries a sound past a quiet cop car
Past a cigarette burn, a soup bowl, and a tattoo artist
Past a field
in pain
The untouched brain
Babies kill angels all the time. Resurrection is genetic. I yesterday handed my sickest child to a police officer whose two memories are hunger strike and gun range. When I look at you, you have a mother. I thought it would help to get a thing back. Clocks at night, clocks at night. I’m not alone in a machine that makes me.
I open my mouth in the dark. Your teeth are gone by morning. God didn’t think we’d see him.
There’s no way to call your mom from here. Two birds fight over the same egg thinking it’s a stone. Dying keeps death awake in the dream we use to describe this place. We don’t like being watched. Each in the end are the terrified pervert of their own stunned loneliness. Who hit god
You can’t live
your whole life
in heaven
genitalia 18
Salt is a word you can't find in your past. Killing occurred to god but not before having a brother. No one drinks more than a fast learner turned on by nostalgia. Sometimes when we love a mom an angel cuts its throat in a noise machine. I got this tattoo in my sleep.
genitalia 17
All has been seen by the same image. My singing is a ripped bird sent to a scarecrow. When are you going to stop writing about god asks god. My mother texts me dream’s grocery list of suspended women. Male I touch in a male way. Kill water watching my son boil. Peephole, feeding tube. Ghostless babies weigh the guilt of escaping heaven.
A creature
Sings
We won’t
Know
A distance ruined by something slow
Drugs, deer, a lamb, a boat
Alone for both
Die
Or don’t
kingsoftrain 