kingsoftrain

A deer to kiss my neck

A horse to want a wrist, oh 

wait

The moment just after the tackle when we’re all still and can’t be seen together

I don’t love anyone until I drink

The being that changes into your mother 
is your mother

I shape myself to death
Miss you

into leaving

in the poem
I leave
the poem
to situate
his body

None of this is interesting. Two people born lonely say I do at different times. We watch our seeing. Cigarettes keep me from dreaming about snow. Ohio deer mock windows for bleeding like a perfect mirror. Weird alcohol machines program invisible reset buttons. Ohio boys howl three times milk. Death is a magic trick that puts god to sleep.

I thought they said call off the dolls. God is the different word for god. I rolled my brother’s eye under a door and into a room the color of his eye. Grief is the last cigarette of kingdom. Are you watched like god or watched like a baby? (how to tell if you’re a baby) How lonely: I dream of doing the job I have. What does a mouth do but reach for a mouth? Fall asleep waiting for an angel to eat your teeth. The child I’m selling comes with a gun.

raccoon light

loneliness
your mouth
no mouth
has

autofiction is isolating
or god
doesn’t write
about women

raccoon light

cancer in the skinned person’s empty hospital takes my cock’s confession 

the beginning 

grief, ashtray, arson

I talk my horror angel into never again using an oven

eggs
in microwaves
miss 
my missed

& secretly

ate
teeth

the lost
ghost
hidden

by Eve

forever
a sickness
falling
ill

a bomb
in time
a hole
in a child
the childhood
of that
hole

unslept
in exhausted
stillness

do we know
god
where stuff
is

snow
on nothing's
cricket

NO SHAPE TO CRY INSIDE OF

The people started naming their bodies

GOD

a color 
terrified 
of waiting
mistaken
for the color
of waiting

~~~~~

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

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