The Vegas Layer 
   Hans F. Wagner

In The Vegas Layer, Hans F. Wagner presents an impressionistic travelogue through a landscape half-reminiscent of the American desert southwest. What at first appears to be a field excursion blurs into a dreamlike journey. In brief stanzas, juxtapositions abound: modern and ancient, human and geological, tacky commercial constructions and astounding natural features. The reader joins the narrator’s adventure in foraged language, dice-roll aesthetics, and geological frivolity, surveying a region at once foreign and familiar.

Hans F. Wagner was born near the St. Croix River on the edge of Minnesota's northern forest. He lived for more than a decade in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Eastern California. He studied literature at the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Davis. He is the author of three books of poetry on his own Meadow Lair Press. Recent poetry and prose appear in Air/Light, New American Writing, The Brooklyn Rail, and other journals. Hans lives in Los Angeles, and records and paints in his studio in Bogus Thunder.