MAYDAY

Clean Hands by William B. Robison

Contributed By:

Cup your hands over your face, breathe

deeply
you can smell upon your fingers and

palms
the history of the day and

maybe
even the evening before—a

pungent
olfactory document

recorded
in sweat, musk, coffee, dirt, grease

cheeseburgers
till the hand soap vandals come

marauding
gothic goop-mongers

eradicating
the evidence of another

epoch
tuck your dogma round your fate

discretely
analyze the noisome

particulates
that taint your ethnic struggle

pollute
your dialectical

teleology
compromise your manifest

destiny
Scrub out Jefferson, Lincoln

Roosevelt
annoying post-Civil War

amendments
scrape off the beard from the face of

Jesus
for a pristine past in newly

clean hands

Return to table of contents for Issue 5 Spring 2012

Filed Under: Poetry

Further Reading

Matt Gonzalez interviewed by Okla Elliott: ON THE STREET OF CROCODILES

1. As a person who has held elected office as a Green Party member and who ran as an Independent for VP in 2008, what do you see as the biggest challenges third parties face in this country?  And what do you see as the best course of action for people who are interested in […]

Untitled #1 by Aleksey Porvin (translated by Peter Golub)

The boxy tube of knocking wheels is squeezed by the speed and leaks a long odorous drop of train— glues the clatter onto the horizon; why the craftwork, is there not enough construction visible? For instance: the flat fog, tied by the powerlines to the forest posts or the anticipating – that railroad pointer directing […]