Armantrout - Money shot

Money Shot Wesleyan Poetry RECENT BOOKS BY RAE ARMANTROUT Versed (Wesleyan University Press) Next Life (Wesleyan University Press) Collected Prose (Singing Horse Press) Up to Speed (Wesleyan University Press) Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press) The Pretext (Green Integer) True (Atelos Publishing Project)

Rae Armantrout Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut Wesleyan University Press Middletown CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress 2011 by Rae Armantrout All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data appear on the last printed page of this book. 5 4 3 2 1 Acknowledgments The author thanks the editors of the following magazines in which some of the poems appeared: The Believer, the Boston Review, the Chicago Review, Conjunctions, Conjunctions Web, Court Green, Denver Quarterly, Diode, Eleven, Gerry Mulligan, The Grand Piano 10, the HarvardAdvocate, Jubilat, Lana Turner, The Nation, New AmericanWriting, the New Yorker, Quarterly West, and Volt. Money Shot Everything will be made new. The precision coupling and uncoupling, the studied blocking and folding have already begun.

Stillness of gauzy curtains and the sound of distant vacuums. Prolonged sigh of traffic and the downward curve of fronds. The spray of all possible paths. Define possible.

As if the space around each particle were filled with countless virtual particles. Which one of these do you most closely resemble? Green stucco bungalow, four brown gargoyles on its flat roof. Which one of these do you most closely resemble? Green stucco bungalow, four brown gargoyles on its flat roof.

Beehive Diva; Rehab Idol. Semi-transparent, each stinging jelly is a colony.

Given potassium enough and time, the bougainvillea explodes into pink papier-mch boxes. Availability bias. The risk of a bubble bursting should be reflected in the price... Tain. Per. In. Con. Cyst. Cyst.

Im on a crowded ship and Ive been served the wrong breakfast. This small mound of soggy dough is not what I ordered. Why dont you just say what you mean? Why dont I?

Wood under an oval lake of glass across which this morning parallel wakes appear, gleaming bits of skin, akin to happiness? Of course, across is metaphorical. But light is violent and weightless. Light is the wail of atoms pressed to touch. It is reluctance raised to absolute velocity The time travel paradox: each passing thought is the thinker.

Security cameras record each moment, but nobody can bear to watch. We are now convinced that the past is populated by automatons. The time-traveler is the one free agent. When the present goes on record, she is thinking, This feels wrong!

We pray and the resurrection happens. Here are the young again, sniping and giggling, tingly as ringing phones. All we ask is that our thinking sustain momentum, identify targets.

The pressure in my lower back rising to be recognized as pain. The blue triangles on the rug repeating. Coming up, a discussion on the uses of torture. The fear that all this will end. The fear that it wont.

To come to in the middle of a vibrato an is that some sopranos struggling to sustain.

To be awake is to discriminate among birdcalls, fruits, seeds, to work ones way, as they say, through. Just now breaking into awareness, falling forward, hurtling inland in all innocence

A diversity noir hit in which a shape-shifter and a vampire run rival drinking establishments. Demons handle routine tasks once were in the zone, tagged and released into the workforce. Chicks are forced to find food grains scattered among pebbles while monitoring for the appearance of a model predator. Apes can mind-read. Our first gods were cartoon characters quirks and quarks each dead wrong, and immortal. Our first gods were cartoon characters quirks and quarks each dead wrong, and immortal.

Silence is death and silence is dead-air. Give a meme a hair-do. Give it a split-screen. Make it ask itself the wrong question. Make it eat questions and grow long. A mourning dove walks along a low wall with odd propriety, then flutters to the roots of a tree nearby where she picks up and drops small sticks. A mourning dove walks along a low wall with odd propriety, then flutters to the roots of a tree nearby where she picks up and drops small sticks.

Her chest is dusky rose, her feet magenta. There are intense black circles on her gray wings. As if any stranger or strange thing might serve. The only person on the street wears brown slacks and a polo shirt. As he walks, he slashes downward, now and then, with what might almost be a quirt.

My dreams are cruel children.

They taunt me. I dream Im telling a story the punch line of which will involve deviled eggs. Im saying some idiot asked me where they originated. I found that funny or unfair. Launched into this anecdote, this dream, this poem, Im already worried.

Mary removed it, carefully, from the brain case and placed it on the metal stand. I join myself to it, this measured, disinterested voice, speaking as if in retrospect, as if to another person. I am not alone in this sentence. I am not alone in this sentence.

A bee has landed, carefully, on a purple tip of lavender, pitching in wind.

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