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.”
God’s plan is to follow them out of the garden. It doesn’t work, and now hunger is on the table. Cry where you eat. Have a mother.
The infant overcome by the loss of its first loneliness.
The existence
of an infant
overcome.
For us, for God.
Suicide is a shooting star seen by a child who cannot die. The mirror in my son's room is asleep and watched by god. I tend to my miracle headache with the peephole of a horse's eye. Order whiskey online by pressing a thumbnail of me as a nonbreathing infant. Meditation: the boy Christ writes his name late into the night of his mother's hearing loss. By morning, there are seven sounds for rest. Angels coding for people who've never been nude.
God crushes angels in a mirror.
A childhood haircut catches fire near my unseeable wrist.
That deer coughs up a string from your mother's stomach.
Doves
for less
solve
death
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.

