Versed Read online

  Wesleyan Poetry

  RECENT BOOKS BY RAE ARMANTROUT

  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 Books)

  True (Atelos Publishing Project)

  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’.54—DC22 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. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Versed

  Results

  Versed

  Fetch

  Address

  Vehicles

  A Resemblance

  Outer

  Relations

  Babel

  Operations

  Help

  Name Calling

  Pleasure

  Guess

  Locality

  Wannabe

  Stretch

  Left Behind

  Amplification

  Bonding

  Through

  Scumble

  Worth While

  Dilation

  Inscription

  Either Side

  Equals

  New Genres

  Presto

  Decor

  New

  Heaven

  Lengths

  Just

  What We Mean

  The Catch

  Running

  Later

  Own

  Birth Order

  Together

  On Your Way

  Translation

  Dark Matter

  Around

  Dark Matter

  Unbidden

  Had

  Simple

  In Place

  Music

  Perfect

  Whatever

  Solution

  Resounding

  Like

  Poem

  Djinn

  The Racket

  Provenance

  Previews

  Missing Persons

  The Line

  Slip

  Hey

  Integer

  Report

  Left

  Several

  Concentrate

  Minimum Sum

  Lasting

  Versions

  The Light

  Fade

  Take-Out

  Apartment

  Remaining

  Still

  Hoop

  Anchor

  The Hole

  Someone

  Only

  Thrown

  Pass

  Passage

  Fact

  Acknowledgments

  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.

  Versed

  Results

  1

  Click here to vote

  on who’s ripe

  for a makeover

  or takeover

  in this series pilot.

  Votes are registered

  at the server

  and sent back

  as results.

  2

  Click here to transform

  oxidation

  into digestion.

  From this point on,

  it’s a lattice

  of ends

  disguised as means:

  the strangler fig,

  the anteater.

  3

  I’ve developed the ability

  to revise

  what I’m waiting for

  so that letter

  becomes dinner

  gradually

  while the contrapuntal

  noddingof the Chinese elm leaves

  redistributes

  ennui

  Versed

  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

  Fetch

  1

  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.

  2

  Let’s see

  your itty-

  bitten specificity

  fetish,

  your mom’s phantasmic

  what’s-it

  held conspicuously

  under threat.

  Day hoists its mesh

  of near

  approximations,

  (its bright

  skein of pores.)

  Eyes fetch thrown

  shadows

  Address

  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 unkn
own.

  *

  These glossy,

  laced-up, high-heel boots

  (each leaf)

  addressed to you

  Vehicles

  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 wasn’t 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

  A Resemblance

  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

  Outer

  Dolls as celebrities (Barbie);

  celebrities as dolls.

  I’m the one who can’t 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 you’re thinking, you say “about explaining to children the best way to build a Maypole.”

  Relations

  “Head” and “Bring.”

  I remember the words.

  “Bobble” and “Bauble,”

  “Rosy” and “Lonely”

  set off now.

  What will you

  little chimes

  bring me?

  Time flows

  because no set

  of proofs

  can be complete.

  Bring me the friendship

  between solving

  and dissolving

  Babel

  “Let us go down and confuse

  their language

  so we may distinguish

  the people

  from our thoughts.”

  *

  Can it be true

  that the baby is afraid

  his wish

  to gobble us up

  has been realized

  already?

  *

  Hard to say

  since we’ve thrown our voice

  into the future

  and the past

  Operations

  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 avatar’s not working!”

  *

  This small hawk on a wire

  above tangled flowers.

  *

  Speech, too, was thought

  to be inhabited

  by a god.

  Then hunger

  invented light.

  Help

  Creased, globular,

  shiny, baby

  pumpkins on stalks

  upright in a vase.

  Let amorphous

  restlessness condense

  to objects like these

  again.

  *

  A space

  “inside”

  can’t bear

  to be un-

  interrupted.

  I mark it:

  “I” “I” “I”

  *

  If this were a stutter

  of brittle reeds,

  an evening glint

  fingering each

  “at a time”

  might help

  Name Calling

  Objects are silly.

  Lonesome

  as the word “Ow!”

  is.

  *

  Could we grant them

  a quorum—

  dense,

  with the shiny

  glossolalia

  of the leaves,

  the resilience

  of open-ended

  questions?

  *

  Bud-nipped.

  What the pudendum

  attempts

  to pinch off,

  tries repeatedly.

  What comes to

  be called pleasure

  Pleasure

  A sleight-of-hand

  equilibrium

  being produced

  as bees

  pass one another,

  a ticklish rumble

  shuttling between blooms.

  I’d like to think

  I’m one,

  no,

  all of them.

  *

  This sense of

  my senses

  being mine

  is what passes

  life to life?

  How distinguish one

  light from the next?

  Only distinctions can

  matter.

  (Canned matter.)

  *

  Just made up

  of

  tuning fork ferns,

  blackbird pipe-lettes:

  little golden

  self-measuring

  extents

  Guess

  1

  The jacaranda, for instance, is beautiful

  but not serious.

  That much

  I can guess.

  And that the view

  is softened by curtains.

  That the present moment

  is an exception,

  is the queen bee

  a hive serves,

  or else an orphan.

  2

  So the jacaranda

  is foreign and extravagant.

  It gestures in the distance.

  Between there and here

  you ask

  what game

  we should play next week.

  So we’ll be alive

&nbs
p; next week,

  continuing

  what you may or may not

  mean to be

  an impossible flirtation

  Locality

  1

  “Is it nummy? Yeah, huh?”

  2

  Songs as empathy

  evacuation engines.

  It’s not that I wish

  to pledge slavish devotion

  as the singer seems to do;

  it’s not that I want to be

  the object of such attention—

  but I’ll listen to this song

  again and again.

  3

  Where you put them—

  did you, for instance,

  those window bars

  reflected

  in sun glasses

  upside down

  between remotes?

  4

  Wires dip obligingly

  between blanched poles,

  slightly askew.

  Any statement I issue,

  if particular enough,

  will prove

  I was here

  Wannabe

  Impossibly teetering

  is one way

  to remain.

  Half contemptuous, half

  ravished

  by vampire wannabes

  maybe.

  *

  A two-lane highway

  between ghost-towns—

  one of the cliches

  you love

  the memory, not

  of events

  but of continuity

  itself.

  *