Mike Bagwell writes poetry and fiction
New chapbook A Collision of Soul in Midair from bottlecap press!
This site collects various publications, including the work itself if the publication is now unavailable, as well as a full book, Or Else they are Trees, and various design and publication work.
Mike Bagwell is a writer and software engineer out of Philadelphia. He received an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence and has work published or forthcoming in Action Spectacle, ITERANT, Sprung Formal, trampset, Heavy Feather Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, HAD, BULL, Bodega Magazine, SOFTBLOW, Whiskey Island, and others. Some editors have kindly nominated him for a pushcart. He is the author of the chapbooks A Collision of Soul in Midair (Bottlecap Press 2023), Or Else they are Trees, and a micro When We Look at Things We Steal their Color and Grow Heavy Under their Weight (Rinky Dink Press 2024). He was the founding editor and designer of the currently deceased El Aleph Press.
Constellations
Constellations is a film poem that is a part of the collaborative book Or Else They Are Trees with poetry by Michael Bagwell and artwork by Rebecca Miller, published by El Aleph Press
3 Poems from Menacing Hedge
What I built did what could have been done / with a paper bag, but I did it with toothpicks / and the sinew of a raccoon. // There is no ocean, but that isn’t your fault. / You just like the letter o.
4 Poems from SOFTBLOW
The only way to say a thing is not to say it. / We are on the vast edge of a system of not saying, / torn apart by endless cable wires / and all we can feel is shame. // To take something from everyone / is a technique for lowering the sky.
2 Poems from Madcap Review
we bury species finger-deep / and become the fidelity of objects / i know you need approximation // but we all halo the sky, / all let it rain a bit
Patterns of Movement
I can only believe in the holy spirit / if there are enough ruins nearby and the sheepsounds / of our feelings lie down with the clouds. / Even the grass in Scotland knows enough / to stare at the sky.
3 Poems from Angry Old Man
reck / less / and / open / hearted / How / do they / even / make / something / so lone / ly so / alone
2 Poems from Whiskey Island
I couldn’t find the remote so I went around / pretending to be myself and planted words / like ‘azure’ in two poems.
End Days
Technique Two: Melancholy and the Music at the Entrance of Paradise
The new technique involves closing / your eyes firmly so that the entrance to paradise / is easier to find: you are waiting for a feeling / that is like finding the bottom of a pool / with your bare feet.
3 Poems from Umbrella Factory
We were working with a botched biopsy / of the twentieth century, so who could blame us? / My mother was the year of the horse; / she cradled me in her days and cut / my umbilical cord with the teeth of December
Prelude: To the Islands I have Known
As the city of Philadelphia unfolded / into an origami fish in the rearview mirror, / the heart stayed where the blood is.
Dissipate
Sleep falls apart in front of me / like a slab of concrete / broken and carried off / by hundreds of gray-winged moths.
And Into the Poem
the storm put its lips to the hollowed-out / section of my chest and pulled in its lungs / to produce a long, clear note.
Two Poems from Decompression
Nothing has seeped into your skin / even as you were gathering, note by note, / the ocean in your palms.
Phantom Kangaroo
2 Poems from Nthposition
You take off the skin suit / and hang it from a hook in the mantle / through the left nostril / where smoke still lingers.
