Object Permanence Poem by Rae Armantrout

What if the ability
to capture
emblems in the wild
won't validate us?

What if displaying
our embarrassing flaws
won't save us — 

say being dead
but kittenish?

•

I can't show you anything
new, not even

an empty room
behind a velvet rope.

Least of all that!

There's a Lexus
spinning in a parking lot

because a mountain road is
"so cliché."

It's throwing up dust, then more,
but you know the car's

still in there
somewhere,

still voguing