I could ask what it means to be clean, to scrub and scrub
and scrub and scrub and scrub and fall asleep scrubbing.
I smell of machines, of wet droning plastic: staid
reproductions of humiliation I fling into the washing.
From pores, for amours, with snores, I know disgust
is a defense mechanism, automatic, anachronistic.
I want nothing of this. I imagine walking into a river.
I chomp on the bistre cavern of a rotting apple.
I wake up wanting wood betany and pass the day
borrowing from frost, heightening my inaccessibility.
Needing to relinquish my contempt but not knowing how,
I douse it with eruptions of indiscriminate kindness.
Later, I lie awake and listen to whispered maledictions,
swatches of shadow preserved into spring.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem