Home Federal

By Rae Armantrout
A merchant is
probing for us
with his chintz curtain
                                          effect.

                     *

“Ha, ha, you missed me,”   
a dead person says.

                     *

There’s the bank’s
colonial balcony
where no one has
                                 ever stood.

Copyright Credit: Rae Armantrout, “Home Federal” from Veil: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2001 by Rae Armantrout. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)