Rae Armantrout

Décor

     1

Drinking tea to pass time;

growing leaves to pass time.

Concrete wall –

the arm slung round this

cafe patio – is studded

with uneven stones.

     2

Ground cover of pert

green hearts:

mass market.

And these hot-pink,

splay-petalled pinwheels –

such toss-offs!

     3

Already

it’s started again

with new bodies

inflected differently

so that most of us

will end up loving

some dated version,

feeling shame

Left Behind

     1

To reinvent

anomalous figments.

Twisted and white, limbs

   strike poses.

One ballerina after another

on point

down the highway meridian –

eucalyptus

committed to attitudes

just so

but still awash

in their own

equivocal leaf shadow.

I pass as if to pass

were to think better of something.

     2

Dreams unspool

contexts

with an ersatz

tongue-in-cheek

familiarity, conspicuously

flimsy:

a singer intoning  “Venice Boulevard”

on a store sound system

late last night,

a crooner placing us

perhaps among flight students -

reminiscing,

“when you’re land-ing

on Highway Fi-ive”

Noted American poet Rae Armantrout lives in San Diego, California. Her Collected Early Poems will be published by Green Integer in early 2007.

Copyright ©2006 by Rae Armantrout