Armantrout - Just saying

just saying RECENT BOOKS BY RAE ARMANTROUT Money Shot (Wesleyan University Press) Versed (Wesleyan University Press; 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) 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) Wesleyan University Press Middletown CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress 2013 Rae Armantrout All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill Typeset in Calluna Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Armantrout, Rae, 1947 Just saying / Rae Armantrout.1st ed. p. cm.(Wesleyan Poetry Series) Poems. paper) ISBN 978-0-8195-7300-1 (ebook) I. Title. Title.

PS3551.R455J87 2013 811'.54dc23 2012024671 5 4 3 2 1

The author thanks the editors of the publications where these poems first appeared. Custom. Chapbook. Ottawa: Above/Ground Press, 2012 (ed. Rob Mcclennan). The Best American Poetry of 2012.

New York: Scribner, 2012 (ed. Mark Doty and David Lehman). The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012 (ed. Don Share and Christian Wiman). The New American Poetry of Engagement: A 21st Century Anthology.

Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2012 (ed. Ann Keniston and Jeffrey Gray).

Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Project, The Believer, Boston Review Online, Chicago Review, Colorado Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Dublin Poetry Review, Eleven Eleven, Esque, Fence, Jacket2, Lana Turner, The Nation, The New Yorker, 1913, Plame, Poetry, Quarterly West, Rampike, Salzburg Review, Shampoo, Smartish Pace, Swans Rag, Westwind Review just saying Your violins pursue the downhill course of streams, even to their wild curls and cowlicks. To repeat is not to catch. Consider the hummingbirds, how theyre gussied up and monomaniacal as the worst (or best) of you. My leaves form bells, topknots, small cups of sex, overweening, unstoppered. My leaves form bells, topknots, small cups of sex, overweening, unstoppered.

Not one of you with all your practice is so extravagantly coiffed.

To each his own severance package. The Inca hacked large stones into the shapes of nearby peaks. The eerie thing is that ghosts dont exist. Rows of clear droplets hang from stripped twigs instead. Pain brings attention to herself.

Spine on Fire! Trail Blazer! (Thinks shes hot.) Out here slim trunks bend every which

Pull strings taut and something like points reappear in the model. Take place. Momentum is conserved. Carry elementary clone world punctuation. Hostile fetus. Cancer is old school.

Impersonal. Carry imperial aspirations. To aspirate is to breathe in and choke. Nobody wants this. Nobody did this to me, screams now blind Cyclops.

To be dressed is to emit virtual particles. The spirit of renormalization is that an electron all by itself can have infinite mass and charge, but, when its dressed A toddler stares at us till we look up. The spirit of renormalization is that an electron all by itself can have infinite mass and charge, but, when its dressed A toddler stares at us till we look up.

Flirtatious, we call it. She waits until we get the joke about being here, being there.

Light was on its way from nothing to nowhere. Light was all business Light was full speed when it got interrupted. Interrupted by what? When it got tangled up and broke into opposite broke into brand-new things. What kinds of things? Drinking Cup Thinking of you!
Convenience Valet How could speed take shape? Hush! Do you want me to start over? The fading laser pulse Information describing the fading laser pulse is stored is encoded in the spin states of atoms.

God is balancing his checkbook God is encrypting his account. This is taking forever!

A street person? unshaven, haggard in a button-down and a full black skirt. If an image could talk, what would it say? A man in a skirt participates. A man in a skirt is never alone? We are never alone. We are men in skirts. I am.

I draw attention to myself. To make a black hole, one must concentrate.

What does it take to stay warm? Fire in a cage, gnawing on wood, throwing sprite after sprite off to extinction. Each babys soul is cute in the same way. Rapt attention on a stalk, surprised by thirst. What I write I write instead of ivy. Green snouts in evidence or more to the point insolent and tense. What might be said to writhe professionally as the days nod and wink. Long, loose, spindly, green stalks with their few leaves, bug-eaten tatters on which a black monarch sits, folding and unfolding its wings. Long, loose, spindly, green stalks with their few leaves, bug-eaten tatters on which a black monarch sits, folding and unfolding its wings.

A friends funeral has broken up or was that the last dream? Now Im struggling between monuments, looking for Chuck. Its getting dark and Im pissed off because he wont answer his cell. On the wall in a coffee bar, a models arms and stern, pretty face frame a window (where her chest should be) and a clear sky beyond

String of empty offices, illuminated, festive? People exist to attach importance. I practice high speed de selection. The difference between nothing and nothingness is existence. You are cautious indolent, stubborn, skeptical, gentle, tense. Next page