Mantis 18 (Spring 2020)
West Coast Poetry
Rae Armantrout
My Place
1
I probably think this world
is about me.
How I carry myself:
warm yellow
furnace
on the horizon,
two upturned wisps,
almost mocking,
in the upper right.
Ripples exhaust themselves
on gravel.
My reflections caught
in a rock pool.
2
“Black ops, black sites,” sung
with a Beach Boys lilt.
Irony is displacement
and who doesn’t
feel displaced?
It’s hard to locate
the ache
in the swarm.
“From a call center perspective”
Siphon
Upwelling –willingly, unwillingly, the bay’s beautiful wrinkled skin slate blue
What do I have in mind for my next thought?
I’ll get attached to an impression.
It takes the form of blown glass,
a pot belly
with two siphons,
drawing seawater in and out.
Functional bubble!
Perfectly transparent, perfectly opaque.
Sutra
My sylph,
silver snakeskin grid drifting with the current.
I wish!
An object
of reflexive action.
It means to go around again.
One crow barking frantically
as a small dog
left in an apartment.
Practice self-hypnosis. The Pacific trash vortex.
RAE ARMANTROUT’s most recent book, Wobble (Wesleyan), was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her new collection, Now See, will be out from Wesleyan in fall of 2020.