New Poetry with Audio!

Donald Revell
Stephen Burt
Paul Hoover
Jonah Winter
Cathy Wagner
Reginald Shepherd
Nin Andrews
Sophia Kartsonis
Sandra Miller
Joshua Harmon
Devin Johnston
Chuck Zerby
Sara Henning
Ognjen Smiljanic
Lance Phillips
Peter Drake
Kathleen Byrne
Ernest Hilbert
Garth Greenwell
Marc McKee

Criticism

Brian Henry on Kinsella
Gabriel Welsch on Northrop
Gabriel Welsch on Smith
Cecily Iddings on Ruefle
Christopher McDermott on Wenderoth

Cathy Wagner’s Miss America was released by Fence Books. She lives in Boise, Idaho.

Exercise 6 (12/1/00 a.m.)

Ah good the left shoulder hurts again

because right shoulder was, and is the wrong one

Exercise 20 (10/10/01 a.m.)

Gonna throw up

swinging the legs like that

pigeon in a jar of slosh

To win the Nobel Peace Prize

your country has to suck

your leaders I mean have to suck

Jealous am I?

A negative of something

patterns my inside screen

Cold on the outside

nauseous in. Yellow socks.

happy I didn’t die. I feel awful

about the rest of you dying

some God-yank

muscle-impurity

or sat wrong yest, sat

through lecture stiffening

the ibuprofen said don’t feel it

and don’t fix it.

The mess of cars past,

past 9 a.m., quiet, heater

noisy trembling, but that’s mine.

Exercise 28 (12/17/01 p.m.)

 I politely rise to meet

                        my knee

          As I get sorer in the belly

                I hate the knee

   am however diligent and strict

Exercise 34 (1/3/02 p.m.)

Snow

starred when I looked straight up

sky dark gray, geese rose

in alarmed soft shh and hasping

long-necked geese

a-gossip all upset

Home I immed. dial up

            does anyone love me, and Karen does.

Muscle under collarbone hurt today

from fooling with computer.

Look left and up             pulls like a bitch

Haven’t cleaned the house since Martin left, and living out of the freezer, the old food,

and no fresh, and living high alone and secret way up high a cloud ranch

twisted threw me on the bank spurred my own cheek

Cloud at the level of my eye

I was high up in my head with cheek-hollows like the Red Sea

To reward me my email is up

Chelsey, Rebecca with news of a plug from Powell’s, and Janet; not bad

yellowredpearl and interrupting twigs

                        Somebody liked my booooook

Do I want something scary

an extreme change, so it’s obvious what to do

(dig my way out the rubble, toward the cries)

and make my now golden?

                                    fadeproof/waterproof

    I knew I was a sign to myself

            I couldn’t see myself except in the mirror

which 1) wasn’t me 2) was me backwards was 3) flat was 4) making me vain or 5) making me embarrassed

to go out, that was all a sign to me not a sign of me

all along I was what was meant by myself

   I was alone to that, though everyone saw me

checking myself out by talking to them

when they checked themselves out in me

I tried to say Oh here have it all

            warm woolen flood          welcomer

                   some spider-netting held it back,

  kept growing over my warm and my intention to befriend

            I could use it to disinfect

a wound and it abstracted me, which was salvation.

Exercise 42 (1/21/02 p.m.)

Breathed & ovulated, breathed & blood fanned out

Tough new rubber cord so I get stronger

& the joint will stay in place like a pearl in vaseline

Pull down the shoulder   pull down the knee

Harness that yellow thing from my glance

darted across my glance, & 2-3 purple ball-blotches

rectangles float lightening the ceiling

   I never see anything without the glance before

            printed all over it

The apt not mine & the carpet’s not my fault

I love that