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Hoop

By Rae Armantrout b. 1947 Rae Armantrout

God twirled

across the face of

what cannot be named

since it was not moving.

God was momentum then,

that impatience

with interruption,

stamping time's blanks

with its own image.

Now her theme will be

that she has escaped

certain destruction,

that she is

impossibly lucky.

This theme should be jaunty

but slightly discordant,

coming in, as it does,

so late.

The character

associated with this theme

should be dressed

in markedly old-fashioned clothing—

a hoop skirt perhaps—

while everyone else

is in cut-offs,

ready for the barbeque.

Source: Poetry (June 2008).

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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