In serial sets of Fractional Anthems
and Magazine Poems,
Wagner lights out for the territory of layered lexical eroticism pioneered by Lee Ann Brown. Yet she infuses her lines with a sardonic and foreboding edge, as in the second of "Two Poems for Entertainment Weekly": "Friendly and forsaken/ Is it hotter to wear a bra/ Or let my boobs stick to my chest/ Melanin, melatonin, metonym, melanoma." For the "pimply and shiny" generation ten or so years younger than Deborah Garrison's Working Girl, this book, one of the first from Fence
magazine's new publishing arm, will strike definitive chords.
