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.”
after reading Meg McGuinness
We set a thing on fire and told it to find home using only small parking lots. The brightest moment our bodies starred was our father as a boy finding a hole unresponsive. To keep god alone, we began wearing creatures that were still alive. Could we cry quietly enough? No, we tried, but no. I don't believe in holy places. The kid that we kill looks like the same kid that passed away. There are moving pieces due a static inheritance and/or you hate my teeth. Here is intimacy: Unicorn speaks only angel and angel only unicorn. Also, here, is the alarm my ghost sets for me: My son will be yanked from my arms by those who can't hold him. The mirror looks at my body because it can't. Sister, see. Death ran through all its sleep in seven days.
Even god
the liar
He cried forever. And I was sad.
Is there music
in the house
No one is smart near a dying kid
Ah, ghost, original
addict
have I been
re-paradised
oh
that a body
could leave itself
to eat
and come
back private
a fire the size
of an egg
or an angel's
mouth
begins
in god
as set
by a mirror
reasonably
erasing
its insides
An arsonist's muted lightning. A crow without warning. An egg full of paint. All of my obsessions in one silent place. Spell mother: the mirror predicts my double's future. Each kid dies differently.
I can’t think I’ll know you from seeing you in a room. My eyes eat their own longing. Touch has starved every spider my hand’s become. Cain, Abel, cannibal. Ohio I tilt the blood balloon of my hearing over a swooning raccoon. Hop into my brother. Not when I’m dying.
Jesus wakes up with a stomachache and all his guy friends laugh. Birth has three dreams about a door. I was so small as an infant I had to wear doll clothes. The size of your child changes bombs.
A deer eats three cigarettes and god has to deal with that erection.
This poem will mention god because I caught fish with people who are dead now.
I am naked in front of pictures that tell me boredom has many rooms.
My mother and my father are singing in a church that can’t sing.
I like to think of Jesus asleep on a crucifix in a missing wasp nest.
I like to think that because it puts that dude to sleep.
Circles from a childhood gun on my toy forehead…
You can’t drink on the moon.
Our eating hangs in the house of god.
Can touch
touch itself
to sleep?
No dog
is sick
in a dying
mirror. I age but fail
to pass
my son.
kingsoftrain 