Rae Armantrout
Two Poems
The Elect
I want to explore
the post-hope zeitgeist.I don’t like
the option
of zero wiggle room.I might mean
“I’m next,”or “in the vicinity
of,”or “about to”
move my joystick sideways,
register
for the longinterglacial
moraine.Action Poem
1
On screen
men discover
that their mothers
are imposters,
that their world’s
unreal.Substitution
is eerie.(We discover this again.)
2
America
has a lucid dream.She’s falling
from level
to collapsing level
in someone else’s (whose?)
terrain, through
floorboards, off bridges,
firing desperately.Someone says, “Dream
bigger,” handing us
an RPG.
