Skip to content
October 6, 2025 / barton smock

publication announcement, TELL 5PM IT’S GOD SOMEWHERE (poems, Oct 2025)

TELL 5PM IT'S GOD SOMEWHERE
poems, Barton Smock
125 pages
October 2025
cover image by Noah Michael Smock

Collection is pay-what-you-want. Be sure to include your name/address details in the comment section of payment type. Email bartonsmock@yahoo.com for free PDF if interested in reviewing.

can be purchased via:
paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
Venmo @Barton-Smock-2
CashApp $BartonSmock

A reading, here
August 23, 2021 / barton smock

Poem-A-Day at poets.org

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.”

May 1, 2026 / barton smock

genitalia,

genitalia 3

A man can be seen sitting on the roof of his mother’s house. He has a gun, or a stick, and some say they can hear a baby crying. I am the man’s most quiet brother. A cop talks to my brother from below and is pointing at my brother’s dog and is telling my brother that we are all going to count to three and the dog will die. My brother screams it isn’t his dog. The dog looks hurt. I think by this.
May 1, 2026 / barton smock

genitalia,

genitalia 2

In the dream
they shove an egg
down my pants
and start
punching

Later,
I keep my jeans on
Swim

to the lake’s
middle
April 30, 2026 / barton smock

genitalia,

genitalia 1

In the garden
the tree
of hair

Later,
god up
at night
April 29, 2026 / barton smock

unicorn imagery

There’s nothing to do
in this unicorn
April 28, 2026 / barton smock

unicorn death spiral

On the jesus
of our headache
That mouth
April 28, 2026 / barton smock

unicorn map

They gave my insides to the animal that had smelled me in heaven. They are trying to grow the loneliest woman.
April 28, 2026 / barton smock

unicorn parents

A ventriloquist falls silent in a film that shows hell. There are places in heaven that are too close to god.
April 26, 2026 / barton smock

unicorn weapon testing

Creation became small enough to hold us. I won’t be putting my feet on the earth and that’s gonna have to be ok. I have been told more than once about my sentences. My deep-in-thought newborns. About the rape fantasy cutoff I’d have made had I not in second grade pissed on that mat in music class. God having to hear god, imagine. I wanted to kill myself and tell someone. Language started with a deer. In the deer that heard it. Snow remembers being snow, but you have to be there. The internet stops to pray in a prayer.

April 20, 2026 / barton smock

unicorn acceptance

Once you eat the eye of god
the eating
and the eye

last forever. Existence

has no mechanism
to recognize
death. We need

animals. Holy

grief sale
we need

animals.

Image mourns too early
the mirage
that haunts
sobriety. This drone

that drone

There was room
at the inn

April 16, 2026 / barton smock

unicorn ghost

In rabbit astronomy, a hole touches a hole. I want you to imagine the loneliness of being a thing that others its own cure. Death loves the disabled. I am still hurt by the art you don't like. My brothers have started running. Dearest brothers I was hit at a different clip by those who would say a prayer over weapons buried in the garden. I don't think anyone should receive an award for writing prose. School shootings, that's why. Also psalms. Also haiku. Also the age nostalgia reaches in America and the age it doesn't in Israel. Death loves the disabled. Did I say that already? God sure misses being notified of the yearning we've created.