And Into the Poem
BY Michael Bagwell
i.
the storm put its lips to the hollowed-out
section of my chest and pulled in its lungs
to produce a long, clear note.
I have filed there, images of organs—
pen-scrawls of dense weed on cardboard—
in rows arranged like a harmonica
so that the wind can play the blues.
ii.
a stillness, wet like the skeletons of drowned men,
seeps through these open petals
and deposits itself in cold drops
like whole histories of mankind
at the tattered edges of cardboard
just below my skin.
iii.
there is awe.
iv.
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v.
together we trained a mirror and drank more
than the dark unveiled. the small objects,
the tangled blades of grass, the unknowable stalks,
slipped like outstretched sinews from our tongues.
Michael Bagwell lives and writes in West Chester, Pennsylvania. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Dark Sky Magazine, Breadcrumb Scabs, Short, Fast and Deadly, and Collective Fallout, among others.