CLEAN HANDS

by William B. Robison

 

 

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

 

 

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