Two Poems By Catherine Wagner

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

A Landscape

I am away thinking
A false situation:

Making “work” out of mountains
When I am not working.

The Oracles are dumm.
Why are they so dumb?

Rainy day, ugly little room.
I will make the mountains hurt.

How will you do that? How ill you
Do so? The oracles talk a lot

Of shit, like any
Body, make your own

Sense,
Mount harness.

Never Mind

The terms given you were: Breathe. That starts it.
Then, do as you’re told, to please them
and don’t, to discover your mind.
Then you are imperfect
child, a wanton.
Whence came this agon? Snot and tears,
hot face, and wretched powerless,
except to cause annoy. So cause annoy.

Catherine Wagner’s latest book is My New Job (Fence 2009). City Lights will publish her fourth book, Nervous Device, in 2012. She lives in Oxford, Ohio, and teaches at Miami University. Her PennSound page is here.

You are not going to BELIEVE how many more poems we have for you right here in The Poetry Section’s archive. It is, like, all the poems.

You may contact the editor at [email protected].