Word count: 252
Paragraphs: 55
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
Rae Armantrout’s recent book Go Figure came out from Wesleyan in August of 2024. Her next book, Safe Rooms, will be published by Wesleyan in 2026. Her book Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2010. Armantrout’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, Poetry, The New Yorker, Lana Turner, Granta, and The Nation. She is professor emerita at UC San Diego.