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Summer 2006 • Vol. XXVIII No. 3 • Poetry |

Breakfast with Thom Gunn

By Randall Mann

in memory, 1929-2004

We choose a cheap hotel
because they’re serving drinks.
We drink. I hear him tell
a tale or two: He thinks

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Randall Mann is the author of Breakfast with Thom Gunn (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and Complaint in the Garden (Orchises, 2004), winner of the 2003 Kenyon Review Prize; and coauthor of the textbook Writing Poems (Pearson Longman, 2007). He lives in San Francisco.

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Hyperbole

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I start with good intentions. On a date, I struggle not to sound so insincere; I think, hyperbole will be my fate. Last night I found a fairly decent mate. […]

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Stable

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Bloody, slick, and fierce, I slid out of the womb. My heart was underfed. My mouth began to foam. At six I bit my lip and took to backyard voguing: […]

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