Veil

By Rae Armantrout b. 1947 Rae Armantrout

The doll told me

to exist.

It said, “Hypnotize yourself.”

It said time would be

transfixed.

Now the optimist

sees an oak

shiver

and a girl whiz by

on a bicycle

with a sense of pleasurable

suspense.

She budgets herself

with leafy

prestidigitation.

I too

am a segmentalist.

But I’ve dropped

more than an armful

of groceries or books

downstairs

into a train station.

An acquaintance says

she colors her hair

so people will help her

when this happens.

To refute her argument,

I must wake up

and remember my hair’s

already dyed.

As a mentalist,

I must suffer

lapses

then repeat myself

in a blind trial.

I must write

punchlines only I

can hear

and only after

I’ve passed on

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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