Catherine Wagner

In this poem all artifice is stripped away but you are held under water. In this poem you enter a mirrored dressing room lit so that you look more beautiful than you have ever looked. I recognize you with surprise. In this poem you are by yourself.

don’t expect too much. Well I expect you to go into the fucking human tunnel I’m going. pink grimy glossed entabulature, welted and tattooed. Enfolded in ropy ceiling-hangings but it isn’t a room, and bumblingly sliding out, little legs of a little girl, bum on the wall/opening pink legs sticking out like a hermit crab’s, she’s coming! shudder out the little-girl legs with a little girl head mostly eyes, no ears, bug brain, aimless Send her to school It’s cold, and where should she go, she will eat her legs with her mandibles her eyes will retract inside. Stroke her riding hood Settle down, little nobody will hurtcha by breaking off your little legs, six little legs, if you come.

Ampersand to start the poem, keep you going, there’s a Next Anne Cunningham Now intubated in white bed mountain range — Event brought you here and event will blow you onward. this is the refrain from Anne harm refrain from all harm events blowing forward gentle your train refrain from all damn harm Camp out in the mountains Under fluorescent hiss and beep. Nina (pet) put to sleep, ancient incontinent; Now you mourn blood Into your gastric tract. Noble body, gather your Guts, seal the passage: Have to die sometime but curving intricate Amerspand-tract says you’ll Meet us for breakfast. this is the refrain from Anne harm refrain from all harm events blowing forward gentle your train refrain from all damn harm

If you don ’ t have any control over your life and being happy If you don ’ t have any control over your life and be happy A family in the wall Mouse avenue in kitchen A piece of cake Looms oozing Men and women are signs of life Children are signs of life When they put the cap on the oil well I thought my life pollutes Reading lamp = coal burn My failures to love To be friend family When are we given the right to control Fantasy? Sixty-eight is a little bit of Time in the world To be more sentient Kinder and “get up try again” Body ow I pretend if I were in New York I could choose friends as I did in school Fork into flesh of animal Work all your life Not hard enough! there are things undone I was thinking you were my father I wasn ’ t here, then I was Through you Through an internal externalized Spill It bumps around the world Tries not to be stupid When Dad you grew up Trying to intentionalize Family back of you George, young and into the continents With problems I already have what I desire I just have it in the future The structure of being is wanting And like a fountain I suck up Later My excesses A little evaporates One day it ’ s dry and drying Means I ’ m done Oh whatever you ’ ll always be there no? I can say when I die “I was agent of clock” They call it an alarm I stopped having time to weed, friends Started in dark Light housed me The TV is so loud I can ’ t think I ’ m sorry I can ’ t be in that room Nobody has yelled at me for a long time Thank you You exist because your dad and mom And you tried to go away Continuity sweepstakes Freed under the cap Get up orderly   loving

I am      Invested in by a      Huge Fund Heavy                    highquality furniture Sense of heavy Addiction glossy pleasance I was lying  Down on a yoga mat My bones basketing air     Barely draped in skin the basket             Effulged by local Air      Highquality        scented humid air to support          My orchid        Skin Suffuged in this Air expense I nearly floated  Who was my  Body I am comfortable I am comfortable     Flying my spirit On a long leash She is            in the wind I am in the     belle belle jar shellacked and        brittle begins to      ding How can I      From inside this comfort Represent      Hope to No no I am                 Too tempted To think I            Deserve it Rigidly and with effort know my privilege I know my fluorescent doorway A rectangle   Among the ceiling tiles Ordinary flecked coated  1) foam rectangles and one hard white light regularly rubbled 2) glass rectangle these are my choices the ceiling tile                      I would tear in                         behind the Ugly lattice to the   Duct area Unscrew the grille    Smallen myself Into the dark cold  Square pipe To share  My cold  What is in My basket    Bone-basket With the other      breathers/Workers Or through the fluorescent door Means giving up   On going   behind the lattice. All that’s allowed   Through the flow light Is what   Is shined upon The light bends looking at my   Skin and hair   and   green blouse When I concentrate  The light bending All at once         Hooks my outsides Hooks them into itself Now I am absent that I am not / shined upon very small        dusty lizardlike   a  toad    a  turd on a tabletop     corner And the outside of that is hooked away wow my parents hooked away           People on the street   skin and clothing hung on hangers from    electric wires blooming and twisting    swells of breeze leave behind             on the street a fair       weather an easy            weather walk-through I think I’m better    than the walk-throughs because something is left of me that’s what I     think I must be wrong to     think so Would you like to    Eat at my house Fill up your              Walk-through You drive through               Fill it up with tea and sheets water from the toilet These could    be your eyebrows [crayons] these could be your knees, these coasters What could                be your inside? Paper       wadded paper It says something What about              Something sticky For your mouth             Honey Then we will read you      For dinner In my  transitional housing    [dirt ball toad] I picked myself apart   With a fork Connected a wire      Where my belly was Coiled up   the plug The prongs poke hurt This is the part        Light plugs into           My/The outside plugs into             To light up The    shine    is    from    unshiny sewn in place with the little Light hooks     Made a case for me Visible so I retaliated Against the hooks I was    trying       My lizard turd was trying    to    join the other Mud my thrashing         harnessed motored made the light Meanwhile       My toad absorbed pollution from the walkthroughs       High empty thoughts      Funneled   backchannel Won’t you be mine [mind]         Be my thought softening                   the rockmud I will reorient  now          I will claymation That is a scary    Gingerbready mud man walking          You can’t catch me       hole for Your thoughts tunneled invisible     Unreflecting unrepresenter Not wrapped The Sun is here    Also   later and at the same time   the sun burned up and we revolved around it dirt rock warm   dirt rock in the dark                     of coursing around the dark I have made myself the center of the galaxy I am very important to myself must lose this visibility The shine is off perspect while kicking Where do you      think they get the lights from? Burn it up, burn up all the fuel into furious dirt Nematodes don’t need light When I am in a room with forest It is not that myself comes home to myself Selva oscura,  ya Obsecurity of self I considered long and seriously before I was bornt I stood on the street With the hookers Who were selling Disappear into a hole Into Mama but come back out. Go in, boys. Go in and stay there.

So why assume [she] Is cold why not Assume drunk “Legless” Can keep up pretty good though With your car in the rural night You are a passenger Your left leg lolls and Your friend reaches a hand Across the emergency brake Which points now at the base of The gearstick shaft And can point at its head But nowhere else Thus does not “Speak” And unless overused abused is Reliable Whereas anyone can misunderstand Or willfully misinterpret the Point and represent Are very different (Moon!) 6am and the snow Sent enough light upward For this window to Transmit and permit My seeing I heard more than I saw I understood less than I heard I was well read compared to But not compared to I begin to feel warm in My crotch, as if a wodge Of moist electric blanket Were stuck in there And my friend was not Riding on the other side of the brake —I mean emergency—he is not Fox-hunting and on A horse in a novel In which the brake Is a strip of greenwood He is downstairs  the coffee’s Made  but he ignores My text   He works alone And I will have to go down there

Please god love me and buy me Read this hillock and ride me Wraith typing all day for money. God bought me today for two silver fish in a can God bought me tomorrow for bland in a pan and a card an email from Rebecca Bought four hours of my control alt delete shut down Bought a new day-section with a headstand My commerce in shall Sky like a grandstand Transact God performed me today for a half minute lucky in locker room hiding my boobs from the kids and my hair is silky and my mane shot silk gold Bought a book on economy Georgie Bataille Called about plane tickets Georgie Bataille I bought my debt today Georgie Bataille hooray Debt off my God today God off my debt in a macular hole I dream of an end like a fount to this night Run thinner and thinner and then it’s all light Macerated in signal by my go I bought my ghost I walk my ghost

I walked in the house on the flat aspect of the wood I took rectangular instruction of the wood when I walked I turned at the wall and on the flat I moved steadily unimpeded, not tumbling, climbing or short of breath. I walked in ease on the flat. Something electric charged into our account and zinged out of it, pre-instructed and paid for the house. I felt house on my heel then instep and toe. I had a bad foot and I paid to get it fixed so I could walk here. I paid for the house and I paid for the foot that touches it. I paid to be directed rectangularly and down a hall. I curved my body to direct my waste through a hole. I am helped and paying for it. all of me exchanged, housing exchange. I saw us standing up in the world. And we sank into exchange vibrating transparency like a sea nettle afloat in the night sea the edges of the sea-veil tensed slapping above, visible when the wind crevassed and doilied If there is a ceiling to exchange and above it sky I don’t can’t see it and I don’t know why I want it above my house which is crystalline gel edges because the whole world’s disappeared viewed as exchange I broke my arm and the window integrally to exchange. I paid someone to fix me and improve the window, triple-glazing it, and warmer I rebounded       knit in knit up. All parties to the event’s aftermath were paid. Suppose I did not go in pain to hospital, did not visit and revisit for x-rays, left the window smashed and sat here by it, stuck up among the crystalline and cold. I was painful and determined not to play, and with the other unemployed weighed — the ghostship sagged with holes. —So you want to be a thing outside exchange? Drain out the dying bath see what color you are? The coin changed hands identical      with a will to transact.

Raise up your back like an insect on the face of the nation He took Miss Mousie on his knee, O say little mouse will you marry me? Getting hair cut this morning illegally I can’t afford it Fourteen fifteen I depend on you and roiling unlap this morn The mind refrigerated all night Now to clarify the broth skim off the oil & swallow it is your oil I must have it shorter so it grows longer in unison A glory and stern grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears