WHAT DATA WANTS

by RAE ARMANTROUT

“Data wants to flow,” he says,
and we’re used to things like that:

urine, time,
lava.

“Data wants to flow,” he says,
as if pleased.

There you are at three,
caught running mid-stride.

The weather of that moment,
already long gone,

animates your body.

Overnight there are leaves
for raindrops to sit on

intact. Children

don’t ask
why they were born.

Rae Armantrout’s book Safe Rooms is forthcoming from Wesleyan UP in 2026. Her book Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and journals including Best American Poetry, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, The New Yorker, London Review of Books, The Paris Review, Conjunctions, and Lana Turner.

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