Errata
I’m a little punchy after all the lines
and torture-lite. And since this isn’t glitter underneath
my nails, pass me an emery board and the strip brush—
I’ll meet you out front, by the STD truck.
We’ll get Ray-Banned, and torch
a Castro twink, or three. And kee kee.
Enough with the ritual attachments. I prefer the steel
implication, the gash in the erstwhile
model’s face, the snip of the top chef’s tongue.
Your assignment is to lurk, but not
like that shower goblin at the gym. No. Like a cemetery
wildflower at Badlands. Like monogamy.
No use now for embarrassment,
the blinking-back-the-tears.
The administration will exempt each one of us
with a bathwater apology, an errata list…
Randall Mann’s second collection of poetry is Breakfast With Thom Gunn (University of Chicago, 2009). New poems appear this spring in Poetry, Pleiades, Court Green, The Journal, Cellpoems, Lo-Ball, and Fogged Clarity. He lives in San Francisco.
