Appearances
Rae Armantrout

“To get upstream
of the problem.”

                            Large eye-spots

Belief can be unconscious
doubt cannot.

There were feelings
before there were objects.

True or false?

Ellipses


    1

My favorites
are short arabesques

seeming to say “if”
or “if only,”

rarefied wishes
suspended mid-air

like fading jet trails

   2

A white cloud
is known as a “blankie”—

                                               or else

    3

“People just want

to get back

to the feeling

of being more

like themselves”—

relaxed? neutral?

Pendulous

and clear

Urgent


I wanted to distribute
my attention more broadly

as wind scatters whitecaps
in every direction, each one
as good as the last.

But the present is urgent,
hard to relinquish—

a name you need to find
then can’t.

It will even appear
as disaster
in a dream

so that “against all odds”
I cling

to a beam, a spar,
a sliver of pain.