The Brooklyn Rail

JUNE 2014

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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 is the author of fifteen books of poems, including Conjure, a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker award, (Wesleyan, 2020), Wobble (2018), a finalist for the National Book Award, and Versed (2009) which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2010. A new book, Finalists, is coming out from Wesleyan in March of 2022.

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The Brooklyn Rail

JUNE 2014

All Issues