If sadness

is akin to patience,

we’re back!


Pattern recognition
was our first response

to loneliness.

Here and there were like
one place.

But we need to triangulate,
find someone to show.


*

There’s a jolt, quasi-electric,
when one of our myths
reverts to abstraction.

Now we all know
every name's Eurydice,
briefly returned
from blankness

and the way back
won’t bear scrutiny.

High voices
over rapid-pulsing synthesizers
intone, “without you”—

which is soothing.

We prefer meta-significance:

the way the clouds exchange
white scraps
in glory.

No more wishes.

No more bungalows
behind car-washes
painted the color of
swimming pools

RAE ARMANTROUT
"Upper World"
2003

In English

we place a noun
meaning fixed purpose
before our verbs
to create the future
tense.


Here, in the private life
my team invents,
I’m in a floodlit kitchen
like the set
of an old-time ad
for Tide

and I am chopping
something.


Isn’t this the past
perfect?
Should I feel nostalgic?

This corn is highly
leveraged

and I’m wearing
a pink slip.

RAE ARMANTROUT
"Will"
2013

God and Mother

went the same way.

* * *

What's a person to us
but a contortion
of pressure ridges
palpable
long after she is gone?

* * *

A thin old man in blue jeans,
back arched, grimaces
at the freezer compartment.

* * *

Lying in the tub,
I'm telling them—

the missing persons—

that a discrepancy
is a pea

and I am a Princess.

RAE ARMANTROUT
"Missing Persons"
2008

spider on the cold expanse

of glass, three stories high
rests intently
and so purely alone.

I’m not like that!

RAE ARMANTROUT
"Dusk"
2001

Card in pew pocket

announces,
“I am here.”

I made only one statement
because of a bad winter.

Grease is the word; grease
is the way

I am feeling.
Real life emergencies or

flubbing behind the scenes.

As a child,
I was abandoned

in a story
made of trees.

Here’s the small
gasp

of this clearing
come “upon” “again”

Rae Armantrout
"The Way"
2001