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.”
cut the hair of rain with god’s sleep
be sad with me for a mother’s hour
eat in front of our father for a year
keep time for a light switch scraping its bored magic across the stomach of an unclicked angel
find a mask
want a stomach
genitalia 19
the mouth that flew into my mouth has begun to open in yours
mouth of god, mouth of god
how do I close the mouth of god
maybe we kissed
it didn’t
fly
no image for that
two people, Eden, a spoonful of snow
No one inside the house knows the fire is empty
Feed your little shapes
shapes
A dream
in a terrified
apple
God attracted to nothing
for Franz Wright
Life is indeed vague and inaccurate. All my days, I've not remembered seven straight. Don't touch my mom and dad.
I have put rocks
through frogs
for sounding out
the patience
of my fear
How early I was
to my terrible angel
I would not mark myself
as wild, I would
bless the underbite, then hosanna
my bottom teeth
into the roof of my mouth
They put a light
made of light
in there
but I couldn’t
fill a ghost
Each toothache
around this time
slept longer
than god
I was eye and passed away mouth
A close friend blew his hand off
trying to call
his mother
No vision awaits our seeing
In prose there is no instant miracle. My son is yet alive. Not every angel in heaven knows about the world. The ones that do have stomachs. Eating disorders cure magic. Put a snake’s egg under the shirt of your most boythinking doll. Piano: fingers asleep on the stitched-up skin of god. A number of my sadnesses have disappeared. My hair that way.
An angel will kill a baby and tell you your imagery is missing the missing. The fish in my stomach say to my stomach that fish are made of blood. I am nearing the end of being happy. Hindsight: God saw your face and slept. Meetingplace: ghosts form a circle around the spider of distance. Pass away, mouth.
in doll
years
I am eating the face of god in a dream I won't finish. Impulsively remote, the mirror. Look at me when I'm drinking.
I have a sound for each of my children who weren't around when I was loved by my mom.
Touch is an exiled portal that keeps abuse from having a past.
You can't take time with you.
kingsoftrain 