Tuesday poem #690 : Mike Bagwell : Father's Day

 

 

The other of the other
is the sky and its sphere
of longing. 

Kolaptō grew in reverse,
roamed dung-billed instead
of bildungsromaned,
raised in a house
with all its mirrors pointed inward
to reflect only their dark walls. 

At the funeral, he birthed his father
through the vaginal coffin.
"Look at this baby," he cooed
and crowned him with a garland
of used condoms, beautiful
with their sheen of trapped light. 

"Send my regards,"
Kolaptō said
and put the baby
back in the box.

 

 

 

 

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.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #689 : Kristin Lueke : i got where i was going but not before i changed

 

 

“I’m writing to you
all the time”
—Franz Wright

 

you may be moved to discover on a train
to stockholm you hadn’t planned on—
the other one having burst into flames
the station before you boarded in malmö—
you actually quite enjoy a thing
you'd previously dismissed, for instance 

the poetry of a dead drunk austrian,
yourself, black tea with bergamot.
confronting that you might consider
spiders, sparrows, meditation, surviving
surprise or a gesture, a ticket, an engine
ablaze, a world weary with trying, my god—
            all this love you may have missed.

 

 

 

Kristin Lueke is a Chicana poet living in northern New Mexico. She is the author of the chapbooks (in)different math (Dancing Girl Press) and here i show you a human heart. Her work appears in Sixth Finch, Wildness, HAD, Mizna, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere. She writes at www.theanimaleats.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #688 : Lisa Fishman : 1975

 

 

 

Bats become girlfriends 

(their fluttering sleeves) 

 

You know those two 

playing stickball in the alley – 

 

me & Mary 

in the twilight 

 

saying little

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa Fishman is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently One Big Time (Wave Books, 2025). Her debut novel, Write Back Now!, was recently released by 1366 Books, an imprint for experimental fiction at Guernica Editions. The novel has a connection to “1975”, the poem published here. Fishman’s collection of stories, World Naked Bike Ride was published by Gaspereau Press in 2022 and was shortlisted for the ReLit Award in Short Fiction. Her poetry and prose have been published and anthologized in Granta, jubilat, Volt, American Letters & Commentary, A Public Space, Best American Experimental Poetry, Aradia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral, The Ecopoetry Anthology and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize. A dual US/Canadian with roots in both Montreal and Detroit, Fishman divides her time between Eastern Canada and her farm in Wisconsin.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan