Upper World
If sadness is akin to patience, we're back! Pattern recognition was our first response to loneliness. Here and there were like one place. But we need to triangulate, find someone to show. * There's a jolt, quasi-electric, when one of our myths reverts to abstraction. Now we all know every name's Eurydice, briefly returned from blankness and the way back won't bear scrutiny. High voices over rapid-pulsing synthesizers intone, "without you" -- which is soothing. We prefer meta-significance: the way the clouds exchange white scraps in glory. No more wishes. No more bungalows behind car-washes painted the color of swimming pools
From Up to Speed by Rae Armantrout. Copyright © 2004 by Rae Armantrout. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.