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Dirty Floors

A poem by Sam Friedman

 

Forwards,
backwards,
forwards,
shove the chair aside,
bend and push forwards
under the table.
Put the chair back
next to the table
where it belongs.

It is Saturday,
time to remove the week's dust
and crumbs
from off the floor.
Here, the dust from a Cheerio
crushed beneath your rampant toe.
There, a melange of dust motes
blown together
no longer destined for your sinuses
which are their natural prey.

Behind the large chair,
in the corner where Kimi stretches out
in catly abandon and glorious endless sleep,
clusters of fur that once were rubbed by human hands
and washed clean of humanity's polluting oils
by a righteous raspy tongue
vanish into the vacuuming maw,
their role in history performed,
their entrance, brief striated lines,
and inglorious fall
taken to their final exit.

I sweep up hairs
that once thrived atop your cherished head,
and flakes of precious skin
that once I kissed and rubbed
or stared at entranced by its beauty
now dust beneath the vacuum,
worse than ignored
but destined to multiply again
through the week ahead.

 

Winter 2006-2007 Poetry:

AS WINTER COMES by Nancy Abdel Messieh
BOUNDARY STONES #1 & #2 by Alison Eastley
WHAT HAPPENED by Lakshmi Krishnan
SYLVIA PLATH by Brian Willems
(tanka) by Dorothy McLaughlin
A BAD DAY by Nicholas Messenger
REVOLUTION by Heather Larsen
DIRTY FLOORS by Sam Friedman
JULIA by Michael Internicola
YOU ARE PART OF THIS by A. Thiagarajan
INAUDIBLE GESTURES GROWN ALL TOO COLD by C. Allen Rearick
HOW LONG THE NIGHT WAS by Gary Charles Wilkens
DREAM OF THE GARDEN by Lance Newman
SHE by Aimee Cirucci
LAUNDRY BOY'S CHANGE by Julian Haladyn

 


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