The very flatness
of portraits
makes for nostalgia
in the connoisseur.
Here’s the latest
little lip of wave
to flatten
and spread thin.
Let’s say
it shows our recklessness,
our fast gun,
our self-consciousness
which was really
our infatuation
with our own fame,
our escapes,
the easy way
we’d blend in
with the peasantry,
our loyalty
to our old gang
from among whom
it was our nature
to be singled out
Copyright Credit: Rae Armantrout, “Our Nature” from Veil: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2001 by Rae Armantrout. Used with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.