Randall Mann
Going Public
It’s going isn’t going well.
By chance I sext my next of kin.
I cast the hook, the die, the spell,
relatability the sin
of horizontal integration.
Continence my welcome mat.
My throat open to intubation
below the public bureaucrat.
This life excretes paternity
like Calvin Klein Eternity.
Randall Mann is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Deal: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2023). He teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in San Francisco.