The Brooklyn Rail

JUNE 2014

All Issues
JUNE 2014 Issue
Poetry

Three

 

Easily

 

The models
in the Gentlemen's Club ad
are posed
with pink mouths slack,
eyes narrowed
to slits.

Show me stunned resentment -

the way
the world absorbs
an insult
it won't easily
forget

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Normal

 

Intelligence is distributed.

Greed is an emergent property.

My survival instincts are a normal
form of momentum.

I don't feel bad
about crushing others
to achieve my goals.

Goals are an emergent property.

Others are distributed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Fantail

 

Tincture:

as in

in and ex

"stinct".

Ambient static.

Be fantailed

about it.

Strictly speaking,

"istic"

     *

As you know, emptiness
aches.

It also burns
so that for eons

light
is orphaned

and extant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contributor

Rae Armantrout

Rae Armantrout’s most recent book is Finalists (Wesleyan 2022) about which David Woo, writing for the Poetry Foundation, says it “emanates the radiant astonishment of living thought.” Her 2018 book, Wobble, was a finalist for the National Book Award that year. Her other books with Wesleyan include Partly: New and Selected Poems, Just Saying, Money Shot and Versed. In 2010 Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and The National Book Critics Circle Award.

close

The Brooklyn Rail

JUNE 2014

All Issues