Dishes, Baptized and Resurrected

I venerate the wet rag. 
It’s a very visceral faith,
scrubbed raw and full of steam. 
I feel most alive when I am doing the dishes. 
Confronted with the sticky byproducts of eating, 
the messy leftovers of human enjoyment, 
the soden scrape of fabric is an emblem of cleanliness.
I scrub with fanatical asceticism, 
wiping away the indulgent remnants of fallible filthy humanity.

My soap is labeled Acts of Apostle:
pure ecclesiastical passion, bottled up all bubbly,
frothy commercialized conviction.
With consumer’s ecstasy, 
I squirt it onto a spoon. 

I am a fervent worshiper; 
I fill the whole dish rack. 
But I leave my god,
cast aside and desolate, 
at the bottom of the sink.

Yellow Sweater

WA

YWP Alumni Advisor

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