Armantrout - Versed

VERSED Rae Armantrout
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown, Connecticut Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress 2009 by Rae Armantrout All rights reserved First Wesleyan paperback 2010
Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN for the paperback edition: 978-0-8195-7091-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Armantrout, Rae, 1947
Versed/Rae Armantrout.
p. cm. (Wesleyan poetry)
ISBN 978-0-8195-6879-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
I. Title.
PS3551.R455V47 2009
811.54DC22 2008043809 This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. These poems have appeared in the following anthologies and magazines. These poems have appeared in the following anthologies and magazines.

The author wants to thank their editors. ANTHOLOGIES: American Hybrid. New York: Norton, 2009 (ed. Cole Swenson and David St. John). The Best American Poetry of 2007. New York: Scribner, 2007 (ed.

Heather McHugh). The 2008 Rhysling Anthology: The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Poetry of 2008. Temple City, Calif.: The Science Fiction Poetry Association, 2008 (ed. Drew Morse). MAGAZINES: American Poet, American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Coconut, Colorado Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Conjunctions, Critical Quarterly, Effing, Fence, Fulcrum, The Green Integer Review, The Hat, Jubilat, The Laurel Review, Mark(s), Mi-Poesias, The Nation, The New Yorker, The New Review, No, Origin (online), Pequod, Poetry, Tin House, War and Peace: the Future, 26. I acknowledge, with thanks, the support of the Guggenheim Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts for the fellowships I received while finishing this book.

Click here to vote
on whos ripe
for a makeover or takeover in this series pilot. Click here to transform oxidation
into digestion. Click here to transform oxidation
into digestion.

From this point on,
its a lattice
of ends
disguised as means: the strangler fig, the anteater.

Ive developed the ability
to revise
what Im waiting for so that letter
becomes dinner
gradually while the contrapuntal
noddingof the Chinese elm leaves redistributes
ennui The self-monitoring function
of each cell
writ large, personified
a person. The Issues of the Day
are mulled steadily
by surrogates. Metaphor forms
a crust
beneath which
the crevasse
of each experience. Traversed
by robotic surveyors. Mother yells, Good job!
when he drops the stick, Good job!
when he walks in her direction Was it a flaming mouse
that burned Mares house down
or was it just the wind? On Tuesday Mares and his nephew
stood by the original version.

Is this plausible? Fire Chief Chavez said Tuesday
that he thought so.

Lets see your itty
bitten specificity
fetish, your moms phantasmic
whats-it held conspicuously
under threat. Day hoists its mesh
of near
approximations, (its bright
skein of pores.) Eyes fetch thrown
shadows The way my interest
in their imaginary
kiss is secretly addressed
to you. Without intention prongs of ivy
mount the posts
supporting the freeway. It would be possible to say
each leaf circumscribes hope or that each leaf,
fastidiously coming
to one point, suggests a fear
of the unknown. These glossy,
laced-up, high-heel boots (each leaf) addressed to you Pairing matched fragments,
then pausing archly? Mozart creates a universe
out of pleasantries.

How is everything
for you today? the hostess
at the front desk asks.

If that (head-on car-crash)
had happened, we say, all this
would not have been like having been
were a lasting thing: the small tree
on the highway meridian having been lit up
for a moment now by sun breaking through cloud Look how
we attempted to express ourselves.
Every one of these words is wrong. It wasnt us.
Or we made no real attempt.
Or there is no discernible difference
between self and expression. What was meant by streamlining
we might guess, but what was meant by streamlining
as value added
to this already bulky,
even bulbous, baby-pink conveyance, we can only ask As a word is
mostly connotation, matter is mostly
aura? Halo? (The same loneliness
that separates me from what I call
the world.) Quiet, ragged
skirt of dust encircling a ceramic
gourd. Look-alikes. Are you happy now? Would I like
a vicarious happiness? Yes! Though I suspect
yours of being defective, forced Dolls as celebrities (Barbie);
celebrities as dolls.

Im the one who cant know if the scraggly old woman putting a gallon of vodka in her shopping cart feels guilty, defiant, or even glamorous as she does so. She may imagine herself as an actress playing an alcoholic in a film. Removal activates glamour? To see yourself as if from the outside though not as others see you. Carried by light,
images remain while sensation
is so evanescent as to be always beyond
belief. The outer world means
State Farm Donuts Tae Kwando?
Thoughts as spent fuel rods. Preceded and
followed by
statuesque
shadows of cacti
on a lawn.

Today could be described as a retired man humming tunelessly to himself. When I ask what youre thinking, you say about explaining to children the best way to build a Maypole.

Head and Bring. I remember the words. Bobble and Bauble, Rosy and Lonely set off now. Can it be true
that the baby is afraid his wish
to gobble us up has been realized
already? Hard to say
since weve thrown our voice into the future and the past This child fights cancer
with the help
of her celebrity fan club, says,
Now I know how hard it is
to be a movie star. Hey,
my avatars not working! This small hawk on a wire
above tangled flowers. Speech, too, was thought
to be inhabited
by a god. Speech, too, was thought
to be inhabited
by a god.

Then hunger
invented light.

Creased, globular,
shiny, baby pumpkins on stalks
upright in a vase. Let amorphous restlessness condense
to objects like these again. A space
inside cant bear