Mike Bagwell writes poetry and fiction
New chapbook A Collision of Soul in Midair from bottlecap press! And Poem of Thanks: The High Priestess from ghost city 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.
It is also the internet home for the Ghost Harmonics reading series.
Mike Bagwell is a form of mutual antagonism towards the sky, 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, Annulet, Texas Review, Tyger Quarterly, trampset, Heavy Feather Review, HAD, Bodega Magazine, THRUSH, and others. Some editors have kindly nominated him for a pushcart.
He is the author of the chapbooks Poem of Thanks: A Court of Wands (forthcoming in 2025 from Metatron Press), A Collision of Soul in Midair (Bottlecap Press 2023), Or Else they are Trees (El Aleph Press), and micros When We Look at Things We Steal their Color and Grow Heavy Under their Weight (Rinky Dink Press 2024) and Poem of Thanks: The High Priestess (Ghost City Press 2024).
He runs a reading and music series Ghost Harmonics in Philadelphia. Find him on this site, @low_gh0st, or playing dragons with his daughters.
2 Poems at Couplet Poetry
I stared at the horizon / until it stared back. / It was not the horizon, // but my other self. / Congratulations! It signed / with its clouds. You are winning.
The Labyrinth Effect: On Ben Segal’s Tunnels
Tunnels, and this review, is composed of a 3x3 grid. A fragment of text occupies some squares, while solid black fills others. The blackout squares grow progressively more frequent as we tunnel deeper until that darkness consumes us. The reader chooses their own direction: across from left to right, down from top to bottom, or through to the next page’s corresponding square.
Accounting for True Objects
Someone soldered a storm cloud / to the stop sign on the corner // to the part of me that I picture / when I hear vegetal-being
Tonal Ellipse of the Art
They put a thousand horses in me / to slip through the gates. There they all are / galloping up the great trees of the night / lightning lancing down their hides
2 Poems in Common Measure
The first time I was afraid of the future / we had arrived at, I was swatting a text / like a mosquito. I do the same to snow, / which is actually a dream insect, / but too beautiful to look at.
Poem of Thanks II
even the gods / playing hide-and-seek / stumble out / of the ocean / in awe / terrible / blotting out / the sun / say ok / your turn / to hide
Where We Are Headed
I’d probably watch a real soap opera / where clouds cleaned the sky or // got bitchy about cohabitating / and always spilling over.
2 Poems in Adult Groceries
The body as spectacle. The body / as a means to an end. The end / as a means for spectacle. / The means of our bodies, all.
2 Poems at Tyger Quarterly
God is too small. He is meant to be the last, / but the rest of the sky keeps planning more // which is a little sad. My friend filled / my hands with rocks. Not that kind of fill, / I mean taxidermy, only the good rocks, / the unsmooth ones that no one throws.
No Verbal Equivalent
Zippers wake up the sun and the ritual act / involves such delicate fingers of pine.
Micro-Meta at Metatron
-what-we-saw-we-marveled-at-unraveled-blooming-thing-this-is-a-short-history-of-glass-this-is-a-redbird-
4 Poems at ITERANT
Listen, poem with no hands in it, / back off and like, keep your distance. / If I say the sky is what holds us together / then you’d better be, let’s call it, / a little nicer to its clouds.
Intaglio
I speak in keys. I graph the sublime / in concentric circles, swallow // the stratosphere of red light. / Like a word stalled on tongue.
3 Poems at Reap Thrill
Water is mostly hurting itself in funny ways / but we are the ones videotaping. / A real soap opera would be like clouds / if clouds weren’t so bitchy about letting us ride them.
2 Poems at Grotto
Light does so many cool tricks / it should win all the awards. / I’m sending it my purple / and not-purple hearts / at speeds I can’t comprehend.
The Song of Love
The latest vices wear their skeletons / on the outside like an insect.
Satellite
I'm building the topological opposite / of a knot. I'm taking up everything / from scratch again until my statements converge.
from Poem of Thanks VIII
there's a rumor growing / in my lungs / about panic / how it’s the only / reasonable approach / to most phenomena
from Poem of Thanks VI
I see the yeti / Ayla yells at a book / we’ve lost the cover / and the hardback / is a wordless / nature scene / otherwise / I melt into / a warm light / again / my mind / a village / empty of people / and then full
Nightmoves and Interview
There are only a few ways to be dead and still / hurl insults at traffic or stars. I practice / the 3rd and 4th variations.