"Remote," by Rae Armantrout

I've been trying to get people to read her work for a while. Next Life is a consistently enjoyable book and is where I'd start (at least it's where I started). I once flippantly described her work as a salad bowl rather than a melting pot of words; this interview gives you a sense of what her approach is. The poem below is, like, her most coherent; but it's a little uncharacteristic and she doesn't seem to know what to do with the ending.

Remote
Rae Armantrout

The breath coming
to rest

like a small frog
at the bottom of a fish tank,

then darting up to surface
again,

is mine?

*

Remote and, by now, automated
distress calls fill the air.

*

Do you believe this?
Metaphor

shifts a small weight
there and back.

My self-reflection shames God
into watching