Amy Bagwell

the moon was leaving long before we knew

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2024: VOL. 39.

why do drug names sound like wizards?
my son asks one of his questions that answers 
itself and he catches me up on science: 
we’re all taught the way the tides are called 
but did I know our oceans wave back
with a nudge that widens the gap between us 

and the moon which grows exactly as fast 
as fingernails which he swears do not live on 
after death. and over coffee that tastes like
a housefire under no moon at gravestill 
four a.m. I replay how three days before 
she died my grandmother opened her eyes 

and smiled and said her morphine pump 
was singing to her: Mommy Mommy Mommy

Amy Bagwell’s poems are found in American Literary Review, storySouth, Smartish Pace, Free State Review, Watershed Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and New Ohio Review and are paired with art by Dawn Roe in the chapbook WRETCHED YEW (Theurgical Studies Press). She’s a member of the Goodyear Arts Collective in Charlotte and holds an MFA from Queens University. amybagwell.com