“Like a Dish Rag Soaked in Bleach,” by Matthew Olzmann

Poetry faculty member Matthew Olzmann was recently featured in The Rumpus. Read an excerpt of “Like a Dish Rag Soaked in Bleach” below:

Like a Dish Rag Soaked in Bleach

this new pandemic or the next
or maybe some unknown future
contagion might comprehensively scrub
any of us from the Earth, the way
the waitress, comprehensively, wipes down
the diner’s counter two seats from me,
sprays the surface with Lysol, then
wipes everything away again. Spotless.

It’s late February in the first Year of the Virus.
In a month this place will be closed, and then next
it will no longer exist. But for now,
the experts say, Wash your hands; all will be fine.

So, if you should, coughing just once
into the concern of your elbow,
sit near me at this counter, then look up
to say, “What’s good?” I’ll say

the coffee is so good and also the cheeseburger
and you must try the vanilla milkshake.
The onion rings: excellent.
The jalapeno poppers: exquisite.
And here’s the sports page which says a guy
just broke the world pole vaulting record

and that is also good.  I don’t want
to ignore peril. I’m not trying to distract
from the threat of plague, war, or famine. Fate,
like a meteor whistling toward us.
I’m just saying it’s good

to have lived, even briefly, in a time when one’s vocation,
one’s destiny could be the use of a pole
to vault over a different pole
which, for me, seems bizarre, though less bizarre

than other sports, such as, let’s say, bog snorkeling,
cheese rolling, or “eel pulling”
which was basically tug of war with a live eel
and popular in the Netherlands in the 1800s.

Read the poem in its entirety here: https://therumpus.net/2021/04/national-poetry-month-day-1-matthew-olzmann/