Remnant

A golden shovel of the poem “Preparedness”

by Rae Armantrout

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If you’re looking for me, I am among the animals
penned for sacrifice. These dragged-out days, I find
my thoughts in perpetual motion. What happens to us

will happen to you: cells fracturing, eerie
mitosis of a cancerous growth, and now we
spiral in the morning rain, eat dry ice daily, can

endure any tunnel if we have enough light to see.
I woke up this morning and thought, what’s
the question? The answer was a long time coming

but it has arrived with teeth like a home in-
vader and won’t leave peacefully. I plant broad
beans in the basement and my lover strokes

my hair and tells me not to worry, she washed
off the poison and smashed the TV and wrote out
instructions for building brilliant but frequently

misunderstood birdhouses for all the displaced
penguins. I’m growing weary of my own still
waters. I want to be turbulent. So fuck it—

I’ll become a river, a cascade that smites
rock to grains over eons. Look at us:

we are scattered and hopelessly broken like

the people we aspire to be, brave ghosts
crowding streets and squares. Wherever we
assemble, we drop gardens in our wake. Pass

through one on a summer day and bring back
a rose for your beloved. Cut the thorns and

coat the petals in paraffin. Henceforth

you’ll have no fear of love. Caught between
your worry stone and news about the end times,
every feel-good story leaves you stunned.

As I search the attic for broken glass, I’m unable
to recall the scent of my childhood home, to
picture what it might look like now, and I feel

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like a rodeo that no one's watching. What
became of the tire swing? The meadow where we
played in the sun for hours? Who remains to touch

the spine of every unread book? If you think we
can choose what we will and will not believe,
you’ve got another thing coming. Requiescat in

pace, dreams of a cleaner world. Abstractions
and paradigms make the best love letters, that’s
why all my affairs have been one-

sided. I feel God on the highway,
driving fast with the windows down. What’s to
stop me from crashing into heaven? Explain.

I remember how you looked on the edge of our
driveway, stung with salt and our utter failure
to memorize each other, to stay awake, to

see the future rushing toward us and prepare.