stepping off the curb onto the right foot, the left foot
following in due time, dragging a heavy weight that goes “thud”
as if falls those few inches
          collective guilt cannot fit inside individualism

          In the cabinet under the bathroom sink, the household
items, bottles and canisters of detergent, Pledge Lemon Trigger,
and, along the inner corners of the cabinet and its edges,—dark
stains, eukaryotic organisms, branched filamentous hyphae
         —screaming and pointing at the crud

          women whose hair was stiffened into “beehives,” as they
were called,—
—canceling out the odor-producing glands under their shaven
armpits by spraying on chasm lice chemicals

          sliding the waist-line down to pierce the gluteus with the
splinter of a hypodermic

          The dishes sparkle, they literally glitter and throw off
incandescent particles
          barely able to eat, no appetite, not taste buds
          the food stays fresh for months and, even after over a year,
is still crunchy when chewed

          holding a clean handkerchief over nose and mouth
          eyes irritated with a burny carbolic sensation
          irrigate the sunken cheeks, the sandpaper lips
          tongue blindly groping upward to lap at the moisture of tears

          droplets of a fluid dispensed from small milky-plastic
bottles only a couple of inches in height might reduce the
discomfort,—later tossing the expired bottle into a wastebasket,
the fumes distorting whatever’s seen through the vapors, like a road
on a hot summer day

          What started as a slight dryness in the throat soon
progressed to desiccated lips crinkly as crepe paper
          it’s perfectly natural to ignore a faint aftertaste

          it involved no joke saying “Does this taste funny to you?,”
very dour look on their faces, to the extent that the word “faces”
still applies

          plants other than the desired plant life are ripped from the
ground wearing a thick glove
          The gardener finished with his chores, and went around
to the back of the shed to hose himself down with a garden hose,
bare-chested, rubbing his hand over his glistening pectoral muscles,
the nozzle—

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