Back to Issue Thirty-Five

A Walk in the Park

BY RANDALL MANN

The palms along
Dolores Street
do not belong.
The past looms
like chat rooms.

At the top
of the park,
a fellow
suns himself.
(They call the hill

the fruit shelf.)
The view
from here
ruthless—
more or less.

We play a game
of name
the building
that was razed.
Ding, ding.

Downtown
off-limits
as a wish,
or noun.
The weeds

like all the right
wrong words.
Or none.
Swish, swish.
I’d trade

interest rate
and day trade
for clean-
your-house-
in-the-nude days,

and date the broke
actor days.
Urinal talk:
this is as close
as we can get.

Show don’t show,
and yet, and yet—
the city
part sunny
aggression,

part accent piece.
Rush, rush.
The smoke;
the dirt;
the sky—

I spy
the gospel
in the park,
septic,
lush as real money.

 

Randall Mann‘s fifth collection of poems, A Better Life, is forthcoming from Persea Books in April 2021. New work appears recently in Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, jubilat, and Quarterly West. He lives in San Francisco.

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