The distance between the mirror
and myself is a cloud of clouds.
But nothing raining today,
just my reflections
shooting each other
with dream bullets
around crowded corners.
Fruit exploding in the political,
revolvers emptying of little Kants.
I ducked into a meat market
to escape the deluge
accidentally disappeared
for weeks. Came back clean
as a cucumber
as odorless as
my mirror egos.
Mechaskypenis throws
a Texas Two Step
spraying oil from his knees
onto the wood dance floor,
counting fours
when he should be counting threes.
They kill for less, KolaptÅ says.
They kill for more.
in the next poem
opens like an orchid
in this one.
Death of the they-self,
the one that kills everyone
else. Cumulus Kid
is right though,
always. He predicts
Saturday evening,
and then Monday morning
after that.
He is steadfast,
immortal,
forever inside
the cultural
memory,
his antennae
swivelling
Mike Bagwell is a form of mutual antagonism towards the sky. He received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, and his work appears in Poetry Northwest, Action Spectacle, The Texas Review, ITERANT, Sprung Formal, Afternoon Visitor, HAD, Tyger Quarterly, Annulet, and others. Recent chapbooks include Poem of Thanks: A Court of Wands (Metatron 2025), 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.
