STRANGER

1

Day to day,
I was fairly happy,
buoyed
by who I must have
thought I was,

what I thought I was doing,
difficult as that is now
to reconstruct,

a collective
fantasy
that drifted and morphed
through all available outlets

decade to decade,
becoming risible
as anything
apart from suffering
does.

2

I wanted strangers to admire my poems;
he wanted strangers to admire his cock.

PERPETUITY

I’m afraid I may
be repeating
myself—
which is a very
strange phrase.

The universe as
running tally,
ballpark figure--
as lightweight.

I prefer to stand aside
with someone
trading quips
about decay.

The kind of sex
where motion
isn’t necessary—
would, in fact, get
in the way

Rae Armantrout’s most recent books are Finalists (Wesleyan, 2022), Conjure, and Wobble. In 2010 her book Versed won The Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Armantrout’s poems have been published in many magazines and anthologies including Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology, The Difference is Spreading, Conjunctions, Lana Turner, The Paris Review, and The New Yorker. She is the current judge of The Yale Younger Poets Contest.