by Rae Armantrout
1
A career in vestige management.
A dream job
back-engineering
shifts in salience.
I’m so far
behind the curve
on this.
So. Cal.
must connect with
so-called
to manufacture
the present.
Ubiquity’s
the new in-joke
bar-code hard-on,
a catch-phrase
in every segment.
2
The eye asks if the green,
frilled geranium puckers,
clustered at angles
on each stem,
are similar enough
to stop time.
It has asked this question already.
How much present tense
can any resemblance make?
What if one catch-phrase
appears in every episode?
Does the language go rigid?
The new in-joke
is a pun
pretending to be a bridge.
From:
American Women Poets in the 21th Century - Where Lyrics Meets Language
Copyright ©:
2002, Wesleyan University Press
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