Attention Poem by Rae Armantrout

Ventriloquy
is the mother tongue.

Can you colonize rejection
by phrasing your request,
"Me want?"

Song: "I'm not a baby.
Wa, Wa, Wa.

I'm not a baby.
Wa, Wa, Wa.

I'm crazy
like you."

The "you"
in the heart of
molecule and ridicule.

Marks resembling
the holes

in dead leaves
define the thing (moth wing).

That flutter
of indifference,
feigned?

But if lapses
are the dens

strategy aims
to conceal,

then you don't know
what you're asking.