Confidential Poem by Rae Armantrout

Shooting pleasures
Ok'd by
My being seen
For
Or as
If.

*

Not just light
at the end of the tunnel,

but hearts, bows, rainbows—

all the stickers
teachers award if pleased.

*

Pigeons bathe in technicolor
fluid "of a morning."

*

If I was banging
my head with a shoe,
I was just exaggerating—

like raising my voice
or the ante.

Curlicues
on iron gratings:

Can it be
a flourish is a grimace,
but a grimace isn't a flourish?

*

On the inscribed surface
of sleep.

Almost constant
bird soundings.

"Aloha, Fruity Pebbles!"

Music, useful
for abstracting emphasis.

Sweet nothing
to do with me.