a large number
of loose, carved spines
out of pleasure?
Boredom?
To start over
in the carved moment
is to take cover.
A solid short woman
in a pink wool suit
proceeds –
anxiously? doggedly?
alone
up a sidewalk
laid down for her.
(We don't believe it.)
There are two kinds
of choices,
pirate sources say:
unconscious
and desperate.
Rae Armantrout contributed this poem to the June 2009 issue of Poetry. The illustrations between sections are my own impudence, inspired by the olden-days tradition of "extra-illustrated" books, where a collector would work with a binder to interpose engravings or drawings and bind them into an already-published text. In Rae Armantrout's poem as published in Poetry there are asterisks where I have placed pictures.