Clear
An old woman is being led through the parking lot by two girls. They hold her hands and speak in energetic, explanatory bursts while she cranks her head this way and that as if expecting something which has yet to appear.
As if the crystalline clarity of this ocean pool, cradled in two lava arms, meant something which we had been waiting to hear, something indistinguishable from meaning itself, and unchanging, so that, finally, it’s we who turn to go.
Close
1
As if a single scream
gave birth
to whole families
of traits
such as “flavor,” “color,”
“spin”
and this tendency to cling.
2
Dry, white frazzle
in a blue vase —
beautiful —
a frozen swarm
of incommensurate wishes.
3
Slow, blue, stiff
are forms
of crowd behavior,
mass hysteria.
Come close.
The crowd is made of
little gods
and there is still
no heaven
-- Rae Armantrout
