Rae Armantrout

These brown piles of stubble hills have failed. They should be more • It should be difficult but not impossible to transmute latitude into a thought a god could hold. • Barred light: dunes coming on and on. • The eye, yes, must move to prevent blank spots from making themselves known.

You will buy your life as a series of "experiences" to which you will belong. Have a good flight. •

We’re out past the end game where things get fuzzy, less thingy, though in past times we practiced precision concrete as a slot machine. But to be precise you need to stop a moment which turns out to be impracticable and besides speed is of the essence. Don’t worry. “Of” can take care of itself and it’s fine to say “essence” now that it’s understood to mean ether, a kind of filler made either of inattention or absorption somewhere near the Planck length

1 About can mean near or nearly. A book can be about something or I can be about to do a thing and then refrain. To refrain is to stop yourself. A refrain is a repeated phrase. 2 This table is an antique from the early Machine Age. The indented circle within a circle motif which appears at three-inch intervals around the base may be a nod to craftsmanship or may be a summary dismissal of same. It is charming in its mute simplicity. 3 People will ask, "Why should we care about this unattractive character?" despite the fact that turning yourself into an admirable character has been considered gauche for as long as I can recall. The word "transparent" is often affixed to such efforts while the mystification surrounding the unflattering self-portrait at least provides some cover. Now someone will say, "You don't need cover unless you're standing naked at a window shouting, 'Look up here!'"

spider on the cold expanse of glass, three stories high rests intently and so purely alone. I’m not like that!

So these are the hills of home. Hazy tiers nearly subliminal. To see them is to see double, hear bad puns delivered with a wink. An untoward familiarity. Rising from my sleep, the road is more and less the road. Around that bend are pale houses, pairs of junipers. Then to look reveals no more.

Haunted, they say, believing the soft, shifty dunes are made up of false promises. Many believe whatever happens is the other half of a conversation. Many whisper white lies to the dead. "The boys are doing really well." Some think nothing is so until it has been witnessed. They believe the bits are iffy; the forces that bind them, absolute.

This film, like many others, claims we’ll enjoy life now that we’ve come through difficulties, dangers so incredibly condensed that they must be over. If the hardship was undergone by others, we identified with them and, if the danger was survived by simpler life forms, they’re included in this moment when the credits roll and we don’t know when to stand

The man slapped her bottom like a man did in a video, then he waited as if for shadow to completely cover the sun. Moments later archeologists found him. * The idea that they were reenacting something which had been staged in the first place bothered her. If she wanted to go on, she’d need to ignore this limp chronology. She assumed he was conscious of the same constraint. But she almost always did want to proceed. Procedure! If only either one of them believed in the spontaneity of the original actors and could identify with one. Be one. For this to work, she reasoned, one of us would have to be gone. * “Well, look who missed the fleeting moment,” Green Giant gloats over dazed children. If to transpose is to know, we can cover our losses. But only If talking, Formerly food, Now meant Not now So recovery Ran rings. If to traverse is to envelop, I am held and sung to sleep.

Like a child, mind wants to play, but even the butterflies are on the clock. Still, attention is happy to comport with the swallowtail as it jerkily rounds the corner. Like a child, mind follows, imitates. First and last it loves sequence. I’ve counted up to one this season.