Courtesy of the artist, “Song,” “Straight Razor,” and “The Fall of 1992″ first appeared in Poetry (April 2010).

Randall Mann is featured in Edition: Refresh!

An empire of moss,
   dead yellow, and carapace:
that was the season
   of gnats, amyl nitrate, and goddamn
rain; of the gator in the fake lake rolling

his silverfish eyes;
   of vice; of Erotica,
“give it up and let
   me have my way”. And the gin-soaked dread
that an acronym was festering inside.

Love was a doorknob
   statement, a breakneck goodbye—
and the walk of shame
   without shame, the hair disheveled, curl
of Kools, and desolate birds like ampersands…

I re-did my face
   in the bar bathroom, above
the urinal trough.
   I liked it rough. From behind the stall,
Lady Pearl slurred the words: “Don’t hold out for love.”

He slid the stiff blade up to my ear:
Oh, fear,

this  should have been thirst, a cheapening act.
But I lacked,

As usual, the crucial disbelief. Sticky, cold,
a billfold

wet in my mouth, wrists bound by his belt,
I felt

like the boy in a briny night pool, he who found
the drowned

body, yet still somehow swam with an unknown joy.
That boy.

I found my muster station, sir.
My skin is patent leather.
The tourists are recidivists.
This calm is earthquake qeather.

I’ve used up all the mulligans.
I’d kill to share a vice.
The youngster reads a yellowed Oui.
The socialite has lice.

The Europe trip I finally took
was rash and Polaroid,
was gilt, confit, and bathhouse foam.
And I cannot avoid

the end: I will not die in Paris,
won’t rest for good behind
a painted mausoleum door.
The purser will not find

me mummified beneath your tulle,
and Paris will not burn.
Today is Thursday, so I’ll die.
Come help me pick my urn.

A pile of white towels in the corner;
a duct-taped X on your bedroom floor.
The backdrop is pitiless, like a late Rothko,

the Marlboro smells belated—
and I grow nostalgic
for absolutely nothing.  I want more than your little

lash marks, your vulgar watch.  More
than art school.  More than the greatcoat
in Tom Ford’s last Gucci collection

(“I’m stunning”, the mirror lies).  I want lust
as cold, precise, and prescriptive
as the en dash of a dead man.

Jealousy.  Whispered weather reports.
The lure of the land so strong it prompts
gossip: we chatter like small birds
at the edge of the ocean gray, foaming.

Now sand under sand hides
the buried world, the one in which our fathers failed,
the palm frond a dangerous truth
they once believed, and touched.  Bloodied their hands.

They once believed.  And, touched, bloodied their hands;
the palm frond, a dangerous truth;
the buried world, the one in which our fathers failed.
Now sand under sand hides

at the edge of the ocean: gray, foaming
gossip.  We chatter like small birds,
the lure of the land so strong it prompts
jealousy.  Whispered weather reports.