Rae Armantrout
Latch
Is your child
a conduit?
Do you hear and see
with their senses?
Does the world come alive
at these moments?
*
Your indelible moments
remain protected.
Foundations are being overseen
using the Assist method.
May you kindly realize.
And if you fail
to trust
*
How did your world die?
Is it still alive
in the minds
of strangers?
Can you latch?
Ratings
“How was it?” I would ask
after you had the stroke
like it was one of many things
we could describe and rate.
The place we have this talk
won’t be heaven—
a place we never believed in—
more like a permanent
side-bar,
invisible side-car,
a bit old-fashioned
like taking a crevasse
for a crooked grin.
Move
1
As a stream
finds its way
around fallen logs,
attention slides
around “ghost forests”
and “the epidemic
of mass murder.”
It does what it must
to keep moving.
2
On the fence,
a jay twerking
his blue tail.
Fluttering her eyelids,
a sick child plays
at being sick.
Scatterbrained
dandelion heads
form up.
Point At Which
All at once
the body sinks
into itself,
as if it had never
moved
and laughed.
The difference is so great
it takes on a life
of its own,
takes up residence
somewhere else
*
“Point at which,”
we like to say,
pretending to mark
some invisible hinge
by thrusting
one finger
down
as if squashing
an ant.
Fugue States
1
I worry:
one iteration taking up
where another leaves off
while a third continues
until all are busy
with other versions
of themselves—
engaged.
2
In turbulent flow, fluid
eddies and swirls
while its overall bulk
moves just one way.
3
In this modern Gothic,
vampires are disgusted
by their own blood-sucking;
binges triggered
by self-hatred.
*
In this relationship comedy
reaching across class lines,
a posh, gay wastrel
and a hard-bitten single mom
would join forces
if they weren’t hamstrung.
Writing for the Poetry Foundation, David Woo says that Rae Armantrout’s recent book Finalists (Wesleyan 2022) “emanates the radiant astonishment of living thought.” Her 2018 collection, Wobble, was a finalist for the National Book Award that year. Her other titles with Wesleyan include Partly: New and Selected Poems, Just Saying, Money Shot, and Versed. In 2010 Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and The National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the current judge of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, and lives in Everett, Washington.