5 Poems

Rae Armantrout

           COLD


What does it take
to stay warm?

Fire in a cage,
gnawing on wood,

throwing sprite
after sprite

off
to extinction.

Each baby’s soul
is cute
in the same way.

Rapt attention
on a stalk,

surprised by thirst.


 

                MOTHER’S DAY


I wring the last
sweetness

from syllables
and consume it before you.


     *

I make sense
like a scorpion

and the sun
will be smitten.


    *

If I appear to address you
while quoting an old text,

I am indistinguishable
from nature

and therefore sublime.


     *

If I reveal myself
mercilessly,

what will I not transcend?


     *

Like God, I will leave

an arc
of implication

      REPRESENTATIVE

   
    1

It begins as a polyp.

In the shape of a headless man,
it marches along the sea floor.

Where this man steps,
another man will grow.

When the water’s warm,
his wrists break off,

clear round by round, and,
dangling tentacles,

push upward
(outward, inward),

easy as breathing
until you think


    2

We’re reading words
we don’t remember writing,

words that aren’t words at all,

bluffing it through
to scattered applause

down the long
seminar table.


    3

White veined
with wandering blue;
blue seamed
with white.

That heaven could be built
out of the names of gems!

“Agate” and “Amethyst.”

What did they represent?

 

      WATCH THIS


    1

Small flame wandering
on its wick.


     2

I had wanted
intimacy, for you to see
what I saw
in my mirror.


     3

Pleasure preferred
in semblance,

sibilance
 

   


              HYMN



To put one over
                           on
            one.


     *

One is everywhere
lured

into branching again
in miniature:

espaliered chorus.


     *

“Glory be to him,”
sing voices
that can’t quite dissolve

in tears,
as mist.


     *

Incremental hum.

Collapse on cue.

Praise Sisyphus.