Operation Phantom Fury.
* * *
The full force
of the will to live
is fixed
on the next
occasion:
someone
coming with a tray,
someone
calling a number.
* * *
Each material
fact
is a pose,
an answer
waiting to be chosen.
"Just so," it says.
"Ask again!"
Source: Poetry (September 2007).
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This poem originally appeared in the September 2007 issue of Poetry magazine
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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