Catherine Wagner - MY NEW JOB

I intended, this fall, to post a couple poems from each of the books of poetry I read, but, as they say, “way leads on to way.” So here I am, finally getting back to it.

This week I’ve been reading Catherine Wagner’s My New Job. I had a copy of it a couple years ago, but I lost it somewhere. I probably sent it off for a review that didn’t materialize. But now I have it again.

Catherine Wagner
THE ARGUMENT


This book is called Hypneratomachia Fuckphila.
Fuckphila on her journey her new spelling
reminiscent of Chick-Fil-A. Fill the
chick and filler well of ding ding dong.
Fuckin’ A. Behold a useful and
profitable book. If you think otherwise,
do not lay the blame on the book, but on
yourself. If you sourly refuse
the new erotic guest, do not despise
the well-ordered sequence nor the fine
well-ordered style. Then in this volume
she falls in love. It is a worthy book, and full
of many ornaments: he who will not read it
is dull of mind. Various things are treated in it
which it would tire me to relate, but accept
the work which offers a cornucopia
emending it should it be incorrect. The End.


BRIDGE OR TUNNEL


Buy me dinner, pay the toll

Buy me dinner, pay the toll

Are you taking the bridge or the tunnel?

Oh, the tunnel?
The lights are fluorescent
You can’t listen to the radio
An rrrrrrrng sound reverbs
Stay in lane

It’s not sexy
Though the risk perhaps—you head
                      all the way
underwater,

stay in lane to the
“light at the end of the tunnel”
                     =orgasm?

Your orgasm

determines when the sex is over
EZPass means you pay later.

-----

Or the bridge                        over the public bone

is salt air

That’s better

A swooning feeling
the suspension.

But when do you go inside?

There’s a hole in the middle of the bridge?

      Nothing so frightening

You could go in the water

but please keep
               running over me
soft wheels

on either side divided highway
You’re going to make me scream inside my head


EVERYONE IN THE ROOM IS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE WORLD AT LARGE


I make the bird a flying fist
my violence goes on out along the stream.

Things mean, and I can’t tell them not to.
Things moralize, to meet

my expectation, because I want advice
on how to live.