New Intelligence

New Intelligence5

1

Starsare the campfiresof exiles.

Language existsto pull thingsclose.

*

Stop that!

Communicationsare being monitored.

Collusion is forbidden.

Humanitywill be punished

with the profusionof new jargons.

2

Inverted in a glass,a white cupinvents the underworld.

*

Fog thinsto chiffon,

nylon,

Easter.

*

In the universe next door,I’m gone

and the shadowsof the leaves

of the elm I had pulled down

still make a fussover the earth.

(From Just Saying, Wesleyan University Press, 2013, pages 91-92).

5Armantrout is a good reader of scientific literature and this is shown in numerous poems, like this one. Science is, for her, another way to deal with language and metaphysics.