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Language of Love

By Rae Armantrout b. 1947 Rae Armantrout

There were distinctive

dips and shivers

in the various foliage,

syncopated,

almost cadenced in the way

that once made him invent

“understanding.”

Now the boss could say

“parameters”

and mean something

like “I’ll pinch.”

By repeating the gesture exactly

the woman awakened

an excited suspicion

in the infant.

When he awakened

she was just returning from

one of her little trips.

It’s common to confuse

the distance

with flirtation:

that expectant solemnity

which seems to invite a kiss.

He stroked her carapace

with his claw.

They had developed a code

in which each word appeared to refer

to some abdicated function.

Thus, in a department store,

Petite Impressions might neighbor

Town Square.

But he exaggerated it

by mincing

words like “micturition,”

setting scenes

in which the dainty lover

would pretend to leave.

Was it sadness or fear?

He still wasn’t back.

The act of identification,

she recognized,

was always a pleasure,

but this lasting difference

between sense and recognition

made her unhappy

or afraid.

Once she was rewarded

by the beams

of headlights flitting

in play.

Source: Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)

Biography

Rae Armantrout, one of the founding members of the West Coast group of Language poets, stands apart from other Language poets in her lyrical voice and her commitment to the interior and the domestic. Her short-lined poems are often concerned with dismantling conventions of memory, pop culture, science, and mothering, and these unsparing interrogations are often streaked with wit. “You can hold the various elements of my poems in . . .

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