Poem Nine

SIGN FOR BATHROOM AND LATRINE

Madurai, India

Those smooth leg, hairy leg, sticky details
of the slowly explosive touching
seduction
ending the modeling session

for this sign suggesting women showering here
dress à la Miss
Illicit Nightclub
Bombay 1966,starched-to-high-goofiness shorts for the gents,

step
shuddering
out from those parts of his job
the attendant figures it’s simple survival
to mouth-breathe through,
black clogs, the clotted mop, knotted muscles
shot through by the red arrow
labeled No. 2 pointing at the dim part,
the squat latrines. But those figures,
ultimately sexless,

cling to their clean nameless distance
of personal soapy spaces and resist

his scrunching together
the lobes of his brain
to make them touch from each otheryet
another reason to shower.
And as rupees clink in steam of soapsuds gone to stink,
bell timers jostle his concentration blurry back
to business, back
to soul,

bare breast visions sheared clean
by a blinding slice of Lord Jagganath light,
and the visiting temple priest from Allahabad’s head
suddenly a torch at being poked like that.

Tonight out back
stray brown dogs
will warm wormy stomachs
on the fire built from whatever scraps

of cloth he’ll find left in the stalls.
Dust, ash, the woven mat his dreams forge
into a bed of nails
from which he’ll rise all holes,

spongiform,
all injuries absorbed,
snooty doubters
finally forced

to consider seriously
his claim:
“Clean feet, worthy armpit pilgrims.
Without me, the temple loses meaning. Our

Lord’s dignity,
dirt. ”