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.”
genitalia 12
Imagine being stabbed.
Now, imagine being stabbed.
I am the body my tenderness haunts.
I am the mouth
my mouth
is on. To sob, enter god. Close
the god
behind you. In and out
of seeing
yours
these are
my eyes.
A person is gone.
genitalia 11
I am only
made
A movie eats its own past in a television that cannot see.
All mothers have been recently lost.
genitalia 10
Touch has one parent
who can draw
up to three
body types
Every parent after that uses their hands to find the thing they’ve hit you with
Let us edit our nudes in the place machine
A movie I had muted was playing and my son coughed and coughed
I am tired of my own love
When I am sad in a poem about my parents
I mention
an animal
Before my kids
I died
from seeing
them die
The cricket of my loneliness is the ghost of an ant
Time
ran into god
genitalia 9
The boy
Litmus
dies
and is briefly
dead
A dog
in the dark
mourns
the turned off
snowball
of the human
heart
Loneliness
isn’t
perfect
perfect
genitalia 8
In the castration
dreams
of bewildered
angels
or in the surveillance
dreams
of the unaroused
might one
pick up smoking
yes
to empty
the wrist of god
genitalia 7
a grey
lightbulb
for a lost
moth
Moms don't die this way.
The poem is easy to read.
genitalia 6
thoughtless
star
unmoved
by the newborn's
lifetime
of regret
kingsoftrain 