• Against Metaphor

    Randall Mann

    Winter 2023

    Gold is your friend
    But gold starves you
    —Alfred Starr Hamilton


    It’s absurd,
    how famished.
    The fast fashion
    of ghastly
    lit fame
    a golden age of—
    Never mind.
    The truth is
    I’ve had minor
    abstraction surgery,
    can you tell.
    Limits ago,
    the go-go boy
    in my bubble

    overfilled
    my receptacle,
    so we traipsed out
    to rue de Fleurus,
    Operation
    Stealth Poubelle. Hell,
    say the word go
    once, and he will—
    nothing gold can. Say
    go twice
    and add a boy,
    he’ll stay if coins fly
    into a pool of drool.
    Speaking of:

    Randall Mann is the author of six collections of poetry, including DEAL: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Copper Canyon 2023). Recent poems have appeared in the Adroit Journal, New Republic, Poem-a-Day, and Poetry. He works in biotech, teaches in the Bennington Writing Seminars, and lives in San Francisco.

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