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.”
Adam says back pain
Eve
baby pills
Birdbrain, god egg, blood test. Birth travels no great distance. In the dream, I tell you it's a dream. Our moms are dead. I talk about yours and you talk about yours. A mirror goes to the window to be wounded. The secret almost reaches god.
I break my nose in front of a deer beneath a star made of ticks
My sister’s hand bleeds inside of a puppet
A naked person I don’t know loads a small gun behind the head of a grey haired child
I know the kid
Move kid
I look at you all day
Touch is a painting trapped in god
None of us are great
with goodbye
An entire angel
set aside
for death
If you cut a bird open, you can hear angels lying to god
Any bird
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.
kingsoftrain 