Soonisms

Healed by a microscope, the angel burns my missing son’s hair

in the mirror’s 
invisible stomach. 

I am in the blue school of that first shooting. 

Ohio radio treats fatigue as an error from sleep’s past.

Art is a moon rock in a gun shop 
And death

God’s refusal
to age.

Copyright © 2021 by Barton Smock. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 23, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“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.”
—Barton Smock