Light
Don’t even think about colorless depths.
All they want is to politicize the body.
The year of the rat is so empty it walks
back to its apartment spilling cheesesteak
on the library’s copy of a Brautigan novel —
The Abortion — reads near half before realizing
he is not moving toward a home
but is a home and so damn unfinished
a person could fall through the first floor
into a womb.
I wrote my friend in prison only once,
visited him two, maybe three times.
What if the first person is so empty it writes
himself as an image of himself
walking backward to his childhood,
where roads mimic each other.
The rat on vacation becomes overly enthusiastic
about anything the color light blue.
Suitable gifts:
car accessories, art books, gym
memberships, geological maps.
What if it’s clouds doing the hard work
and all I can do is adjust myself
into the sky?
I am approaching the body
with what
Editor’s note: if viewing this poem on a mobile browser, turn the phone sideways.
Mike Bagwell is a writer and software engineer based in Philly. He received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence and his work appears or is forthcoming in Halfway Down the Stairs, HAD, BULL, Bodega, SOFTBLOW, Whiskey Island, and others. Some editors have kindly nominated him for a Pushcart. He is the author of the chapbook A Collision of Soul in Midair (forthcoming from Bottlecap Press). He was the founding editor and designer of El Aleph Press and his work can be found at mikebagwell.me.
