Four Poems

Catherine Wagner

THE AUTONOMY OF ART HAS ITS ORIGINS IN THE CONCEALMENT OF LABOR

My heart beat very hard by itself.

 

 

 

 

 

from INFRARES

Whence this yellow page?
Aha! a sun trap, mid-notebook, slept agog.

The first
word on the yellow page is to be unctuous

birdpile.

“birdpile” in flight? or
grounded (dead)?

Meaning
brutally dragged in.

 

 

 

 

 

from INFRARES

And we return to the question of the integration of color.

“Integration,” heard aloud, contains within it 
“gray.” A sludgy neutral
fades. 
Integration contains the word “shun.”

I am going to go underground
and see what colors there are down there

Mines
       & Everyones.

I wake up and write continuously
With short pauses

 

 

 

 

 

I PRONOMIAL 

deride and pony
consciousness 
into halflit 
stable.
One rides a horse
to go somewhere, of course.


The actual is
flickering a binary
between word and not-word. 
I said I needed to have the end ofthe word for next.
But I did not needit. Next comes anyway
whatever you say. 
I and time were made for/of each other.

 

 

—-

 

 

Catherine Wagner’s latest book is Nervous Device (City Lights, 2012). She teaches at Miami University and lives in Oxford, Ohio with her son Ambrose.