"Apartment" by Rae Armantrout

Apartment



    1

The woman on the mantel,
who doesn’t much resemble me,
is holding a chainsaw
away from her body,
with a shocked smile,
while an undiscovered tumor
squats on her kidney.



    2

The present
is a sentimental favorite,
with its heady mix
of grandiosity
and abjection,
truncated,
framed.



    3

It’s as if I’m subletting
a friend’s apartment.
Even in the dream,
I’m trying to imagine
which friend.

And I’m trying to get
all my robes together,
robes I really own and
robes I don’t


Source of the text - Rae Armantrout, Versed.  Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2009, p.107.

TJB: The poet sees, deeply, her previous self in a picture, describes the picture, & unleashes an extraordinary metaphor for her unfamiliar body.