Rae Armantrout

Confidential

Shooting pleasures  
Ok’d by
My being seen
For
Or as
If.
 
                  *
 
Not just light
at the end of the tunnel,
 
but hearts, bows, rainbows—
 
all the stickers
teachers award if pleased.
 
                  *
 
Pigeons bathe in technicolor  
fluid “of a morning.”
 
                  *
 
If I was banging
my head with a shoe,
I was just exaggerating—
 
like raising my voice  
or the ante.
 
Curlicues
on iron gratings:
 
Can it be
a flourish is a grimace,
but a grimace isn’t a flourish?
 
                  *
 
On the inscribed surface
of sleep.
 
Almost constant  
bird soundings.
 
“Aloha, Fruity Pebbles!”
 
Music, useful
for abstracting emphasis.
 
Sweet nothing  
to do with me.
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