Amy Bagwell

any children?

my grandmother 
never drove or
rode escalators 
she wasn’t ready

when we say 
ready or not 
here I come 
it’s the I 

(grammatically)
not hiders
who might be 
surprised

the way flood
first astonishes
river which 
despite dreaming 

of doing so 
never expects 
to overswell
its bounds

for as rivers
deliver themselves 
their memories 
blur in oceans

once during 
our five
riparian years
a surge left

four basketballs 
bobbing 
like swimmers
in bridgewater

three weeks 
before you 
were born
a phenomenon

for which (despite 
my body's 
autonomous
alchemistry:

clock expanding 
to hold the watch 
it’s making)
I wasn’t ready

so I walked 
wet woods
fighting new mud
for old shoes

and found him
head-down 
in a tree—
The Incredible
 
half-Hulk—
his plastic torso
as big as my own
but hollow 

and without first
looking inside 
(still thinking 
like one person

which I’ll never
again be) I tried 
pulling him free
what if 

that copperhead 
had flown out
toward me
and not away? 

luckily
she wasn’t ready
or maybe she was
maybe I was

the emergency
she’d waited for
to push her
past fear

maybe snakes 
dream of flight 
the way scientists 
dream of 

undeniability 
and of smashing 
the way we 
dreamed you

Amy Bagwell’s poems are recently in 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. Her website is amybagwell.com.