Clean

As simply as a self-effacing bar of soap
e.g., Ivory, two weeks later

it's half its original size. I use it daily

& because the stall has no soap dish

up & out of the stream, the shower

pours down on the bar in its corner —

effaces it even faster than my washing does.

Ivory was childhood soap, pure

or not pure, what does pure mean

when it comes to soap? Or to people?

Pure at heart. Purer than driven snow.

(The concept of virgin flits on & off

the screen.) Pure genius. Pure & simple.

Ninety-nine & forty-four one hundredths

pure probably meant something to my mother

who put her faith in clean. Scrub as I would

I never met her standards — impure

thoughts & words. She washed out my mouth

with Ivory soap time & time again

to no avail — a hippie meant to be. In what

dimension did she believe herself pure?

Raised Catholic, by eighteen lapsed

& at war with her bricklayer father,

how does she come to consider herself pure?

Trains as a nurse, meets & marries my father,

never knows another man, even

the doctor who lusts for her, she tells me

that & no more, conceals the rest

(all the while deploring my behavior —

why did she even tell me that much?)

& lives & dies before anyone can find out.