Rae Armantrout
ORDERS
Pick up the small green notebook
and put it back down
on the bed.
Scratch your chin,
then your forehead.
“Self-care,” someone says.
Stare at the coffee maker
like it might offer
something more, something
you don’t yet suspect.
Touch your fingertips
together. There.
Pick up the notebook
and write this.
“Idly,” someone says,
“without purpose or intent.”
Not the meaningless
but the unmeant
is scary. “Sublime,”
someone said.
RAE ARMANTROUT is the author of numerous books, most recently Go Figure (Wesleyan, 2024) and Finalists (Wesleyan, 2022). Wobble (Wesleyan, 2018), was a National Book Award finalist.
ISSUE FOURTEEN features poetry by Austin Araujo, Rae Armantrout, Aaron Baker, David Baker, Cal Bedient, John Berryman, Daniel Borzutzky, Izzy Casey, Colby Cotton, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Yongyu Chen, William Virgil Davis, Maggie Dietz, Kirsten Kaschock, David Kirby, Virginia Konchan, Timothy Liu, Airea D. Matthews, Ted Mathys, Erika Meitner, Olatunde Osinaike, Mary Ruefle, Natalie Shapero, Jordan Stempleman, and Matthew Tuckner; fiction by Tyler Barton, Elizabeth Hart Bergstrom, Tom Howard, and John Dermot Woods; nonfiction by Emmeline Clein, Aryn Kyle, David Stuart MacLean, and Justin Quarry; and Airea D. Matthews in conversation with Devon Walker-Figueroa.