SCUMBLE
by Rae Armantrout
What if I were turned on by seemingly innocent words such as “scumble,” “pinky,”
or “extrapolate?”
What if I maneuvered conversation in the hope that others would pronounce these words?
Perhaps the excitement would come from the way the other person touched them lightly and carelessly with his tongue.
What if “of” were such a hot button?
“Scumble of bushes.”
What if there were a hidden pleasure
in calling one thing
by another’s name?
HAUNTS
by Rae Armantrout
1
Rock eaten
to familiar shapes –
heads cocked
on jagged spines.
*
How many
orange, pink, white
rock pinnacles
are visible from here?
Grandeur
is that number
plus distance,
as if “again”
could be made manifest.
2
“Nature” was a 19th century fad,
cousin to eugenics.
In the 21st century,
America’s soft core’s
undead.
*
On how many bookstore shelves,
lovely, fanged teenagers,
red-eyed, smeared with blood.