Poems by Rae Armantrout

Without End

“There is no obstacle

to appropriate types

of information processors

continuing to process

information.”

      *

“Process” meaning register;

register meaning process.

      *

“Or more simply

they could process

infinite amounts

of information

in an unbounded future.”

      *

Process meaning separate;

process meaning fuse.

      *

Coral

feather-duster

flowers

of the eucalyptus

hang among

gray-greens.

      * 

“Which is not to say

that they would

or should.”

Living Space

Struck bell’s
old well; 

long vowel’s
vanishing circumference.

      * 

Hawking says gravity
pulled all this
from nothing.

      *

Maroon curtains
swept into flounces,
held by brass barrettes

beyond which
a cinderblock wall
wears an ivy wig.

      *

But gravity
is the impression

matter makes
on space.

      *

Or gravity
is self-love

Event Horizon

A street person? —
unshaven, haggard —
in a button-down
and a full black skirt.

If an image could talk,
what would it say?

A man in a skirt participates.

A man in a skirt
is never alone?

      *

We are never alone.

We are men in skirts.

I am.

I draw attention to myself.

To make a black hole,
one must concentrate.