Thursday, May 25, 2017

What I'm Reading #99

A new volume of Poems from Randall Mann has entered by collection.

These are smart, engaging explorations of contemporary life with an understated accessibility.  I have been reading them slowly the way I choose to enjoy each cherry off of the tree.  Lolling the fruit around and savoring every nuance that I can taste from the flesh of the fruit before moving on to the next one.

For example:

PROPRIETY

In a precisely lighted room, the CFO speaks
of start-to-start dependencies.
Says let me loop back with you.

Says please cascade as appropriate.
It's that time of morning; we all can smell
the doughnut factory. If scent were white

noise, doughnuts would be that scent.
The factory won't sell at any price.
The building next to it burns the animals

we experiment on. I have worked
on a few preclinical reports in my time.
The rhesus monkeys become

so desperate that they attempt suicide,
over and over again. I am legally obligated
to spare you the particulars.

How could things be any different?
Here many choice molecules have been born.
Here. This pill will dissolve like sugar.

Your last five months will be good ones.


~ Randall Mann, 1972 -

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