By Amy Bagwell
watch my hands
not my face
I’m the safecracker
in my heist movie life
and I will get in
and I have a car waiting
and she is a good driver
and she is ready
but if I think of her
I will never get this right
and never follow her
flashlight for miles
to her favorite stars
is it wrong to say yes I see?
I ask the cards
and they respond to me
and the beautiful part is tomorrow
going back to the well
for a redder letter day
a later reckoning
I can do this
I can align all half
million possible spreads
to the moments through which
I am guessing
yes. it is a practice of faith
beyond the pitcher’s
the batter’s
the catcher’s
it’s the certainty of the umpire
who 70 times per game
2400 games a season
reinvents an invisible rectangle
upon which the endeavor
is premised
and by which its outcomes
are determined
watch my hands
Such A Moon
spring. my favorite songs are lined up like suitors and the lawn flashes handfuls of new blue violas on such slight stems they can hardly hold their yellow faces sunward. a few in a vase will stay bright for tonight and the honeybees won’t know what little they’re missing and the bumblebees will continue in their oblivion bobbing so improbably they must be on strings worked by someone far away and very near- sighted and before you decide this is a religious poem think who you’re talking about. the bees may want to be mating but only bounce off each other negotiating in their one- letter language. an afternoon moon appears (if such a moon rises, I have never seen it) so pale it’s translucent and on cue Art Tatum plays “It’s Only a Paper Moon” with all of his hands which were never not bouncing and yes out of your embrace the world’s a temporary parking place a lovesick singer would sing if there were a singer singing but it’s only all of the piano turned inside out and back with every measure and gesture. for you. take these flowers. watch bees with me.
Amy Bagwell’s poems will be/are recently in Beloit Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, Free State Review, Cloudbank, and Boxcar Poetry Review. A co-founder of the artists’ residency nonprofit Goodyear Arts, she holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte.