The Body You're In

Phoebe Wagner’s poetry is a kind of undressing. Offering up the social and sexual uncertainties of our time, she forges these into a bolder understanding of contemporary angst. Language heady as Plath melts into a precise, Carson-like wit. Wagner’s voice is a reflexive one, referencing therapists, care plans, bingo tickets, pick-up lines, familial myths: ‘Abuela knew I was the devil when I came out like that. / That all of Spain had bled out of me.’ Formally inventive, highly visual, these poems ripple through the mind, at once cleansing and intoxicating.