Jeanne Wagner

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Dream Navigation II

Containment is contentment
in the fluid embrace of the dark.
I’m a Houdini living out my dreams.
In my pocket a no-way ticket.
The pulse of my sleeping body,
that first escape artist,
lost in a dialogue of one
formed from a random speck
bristling in the dark.
I’m hapless as a shooting star
longing to dissolve
into sky.
A body quenched by flight.

Jeanne Wagner’s book, One Needful Song, was the winner of the 2024 Catamaran Prize. She is also the author of four chapbooks and three previous full-length collections. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah and The Southern Review. A retired tax accountant, she lives in Kensington, California.