ISSUE 01: STATE(D) VIOLENCE
ABOUT
MIKE BAGWELL
Mike Bagwell is a form of mutual antagonism towards the sky. He received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence and recent work appears in Action Spectacle, ITERANT, Sprung Formal, Tyger Quarterly, THRUSH, Annulet, and others. Recent chapbooks include Poem of Thanks: A Court of Wands (Metatron), A Collision of Soul in Midair (Bottlecap), and micros from Ghost City and Rinky Dink. He runs the Ghost Harmonics reading series in Philly. Find him at mikebagwell.me, @low_gh0st, or playing dragons with his daughters.
THE TWO OF SWORDS
on the two of swords
fuck sight
don't want it
don't need it
hold these two swords
and go cut that shit
fucking cut the moon down
feed it to the dogs
fuck justice
fuck deep thinking
blind as a sword
carve the ocean
from itself
I don't give a fuck
misnomer
I am full of names
the wrong ones or
the slightly wrong
my friend in Portland Maine
loves living
on the coast goes
kayaking in the mornings
with his dog named Boomer
or Bower or something
I can picture his dog
at the bow of a slime-colored
one-man boat
bright snarls of gold
and red light
in his fur
I worry
and am as lost
as every simple object
I’ve never been to Lewiston
or anywhere really
I just meet myself
where I’ve already been
when they x-ray my teeth
they find the Lewiston
police budget
all ten million tucked
behind the molars
18 dead I wonder
if I should call that buddy
with his dog Boomhauer
or whatever
but the shooting isn’t really close
to where he’s at
worry is how I become other
and distraction/forgetting
see for instance how
I need a root canal
so they schedule two appointments
all roads in our childhood
go in circles
repeat themselves endlessly
like the rims of voids
in memory
when will it be raining
inside the raining? now
I wanted to be human
but kept missing
the mark
so I pressed pause
on the haunted
McDonald's dream
literally said nah skip this one
to the white nothingness
beyond the big picture windows
but the clown still approached
guns drawn
I awoke tonguing the sore
gum like I could tunnel
somewhere beyond pain
Bowser maybe
though that’d be wild
in character but wild still
would make for a good
dog’s halloween costume
a genocide on
men setting themselves
aflame the leader of the Jewish community
I barely entered but from which
I’m already self-excommunicated
shouting am yisrael chai
at the hanukkah gelt drop
kids picking gold out of the grass
I don't necessarily have the best
object permanence myself
e.g. the car passing
into the covered bridge
might never come out
might have never gone
in in
the first place
my daughter
gone
in the next
everyone’s had that thought
what if it were my kid
gone as easily
as any name
and what if it was
the wrong name
that I’d given her?
what if she doesn't get
the chance to grow
into it?
this appellation
oh shit it was Copper
my friend's dog’s name
like the metal
I was pretty close
what if I wore
a wildfire pin on my lapel
during political events
or maybe a universal symbol
for mass starvation? that’d really
be something
hobbies include blasting
the most chaotic music
while trying
to get a toddler
out the door
diagrams of dreams and stasis
line the history
I peak in the dream room
and see all the dreams
in all the rooms
it's like
I don't even care
what your beliefs are
but if they lead you to
support a system that
kills trans kids kills gazan kids
kills indigenous kids
kills my kids then you’re fucking
believing wrong
colors swallow everything
we arrive
at the ice palace
squad deep
only a few
go in but all
belong
my will
speaks
I invented
something great
but got drained
by mythic beasts
under strange
enchantments
thanks though to
my daughter
for her advice:
don't forget your legs
are a magazine
and don't forget
your power away
ok?
big fan of cereal myself
all the times
when nothing happens
I'm thinking about the nothing
that's happening
in my basement
is a growing pile of
tools for being
and unbeing
you know what?
fuck it this poem
tepid as the porridge dripping
from my daughter's spoon
Mosab Abu Toha just posted
a video of a dead girl
still covering her ears
same age
we got Ayla her first
pair of headphones
nothing in the mail today
I don't know what
I'm expecting
watering woes
like I said
I’m on a revenge streak
like I said
I’ve contracted out
my dirty work to
carnivorous plants
let them do my violence
let them close
the symbolic
they play
the equivalent of heavy metal
in the olfactory equivalent
of their bodies