Two Poems by Mike Bagwell
More Islands I Have Known
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Lung Bright River
Lung Bright River eats a river and grows
in his light. Lung Bright River honors
the ether. Lung Bright River loses his keys
and is doomed to retrace his steps
toward the ocean, never finding
them. Lung Bright River breathes out
his lung and it goes floating off
with the wind over the high tree canopy,
glinting—it will never come down.
Lung Bright River is skeptical of circularity
and then circles anyway, circles circularity itself.
Lung Bright River writes ordinary notes
in the bedrock, stray thoughts scratched down
quickly without turning back. Lung
Bright River eats his lung on the other side
of light and loses their gender. Lung Bright
River brightens. Lung Bright River lungs.
Lung Bright River wears the ether to their grave
and we’ll never see anything gossamer again.
Lung Bright River is sad for us, how fucked we are,
how doomed, how sad we are for Lung Bright
River and their long light. Lung Bright River
eats a river and grows in their light.