God and Mother
went the same way.
* * *
What's a person to us
but a contortion
of pressure ridges
palpable
long after she is gone?
* * *
A thin old man in blue jeans,
back arched, grimaces
at the freezer compartment.
* * *
Lying in the tub,
I'm telling them—
the missing persons—
that a discrepancy
is a pea
and I am a Princess.
Source: Poetry (June 2008).
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This poem originally appeared in the June 2008 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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