A Covid-19 Sacrament

CAROL COFFEE REPOSA

May 31, 2020

“Wash your hands,” the doctors say.

So I wash them.

“Keep calm and wash your hands,”

The Alamodome sign decrees.

Hot water rushes between my fingers

And over my upturned palms.

“Wash your hands long enough to sing

‘Happy Birthday to You’ twice,”

The radio voice commands.

I work up a rich lather

Foam and bubbles everywhere.

With luck and suds perhaps I’ll rid myself

Of every misbegotten molecule,

Each errant cell.

“All the perfumes of Arabia

Will not sweeten this little hand,”

Lady Macbeth laments.

So I wash still more,

Stronger soap and hotter water.

Maybe with such scrubbing I can shed

Those secret silent grudges,

Envy of another’s car or dress or poem,

The time I bit my sister’s arm

And almost hit a vein,

Her blood dripping on the floor.

I want to rinse it all away,

Rinse off Syria and Yemen,

Iraq and Afghanistan, the toddler’s body

Washed up on a Mediterranean shore,

His shoes still neatly tied.

I will strip it all,

Peel off the sickened layers,

Scour through skin, muscle, sinew

Even the memory of Pontius Pilate

Until I finally behold

Clean bones

And wait.

The poems, reviews and essays of CAROL COFFEE REPOSA have appeared in The Atlanta Review, Southwestern American Literature, Valparaiso Review, The Texas Observer, and other journals and anthologies.  Author of five books of poetry, member of the Texas Institute of Letters, four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and winner of the 2015 San Antonio Public Library Arts & Letters Award, she is the 2018 Texas Poet Laureate.