WASH OUT

He shouldered shoved his mop
And yanked it back to that proper angle
Where his upper body strength could jab it
A few feet beyond his last swipe;
Almost touching back in times to
When he steered his plow into mounds
Aching for cotton or tobacco plants…
July sunrise burning off the edge of bricks
Woke him from his basement cot
To wrangle with the grime of sticky candy wrappers;
Epoxied to marble stairs and longings.
Get a head start on the sweltering day;
Supersaturating the Rastafarian threads
Bloated with soapy lethal disinfectants,
Strangling any hint of a breeze
Or any renter rising to walk down
To the avenue to buy a paper.
The veiny marble stairs and hall tiles
Seemed to scream out for their weekly bath.
The trick was making every surface
Lacquer slick,
When looking wet seemed proof
Of public cleanliness…
Grandmother let the shower run
And waited ten minutes to soak her
Uncut hair.
It seemed that winter in the tenements
Carried her into summer
So that one wash down gave her
License to lecture us as to how
To scrub behind our ears…
The mop man feigned every indication
That he was a step above the white folks
Who steered clear of the slightest chill\
Of being wet…
He sang old Negro spirituals
With verse he learned in the Carolina’s,
A generation back.
Lighting up a cigarette break
While leaning on the dry wood handle
I could almost see him scratching
The earth to tunnel in a seedling…
We’ve always honored in unspoken ways
Those, old Sharecroppers
Even when they were resurrected as mop men
Prodding grandma to insure
Her hair wore a drowning shine;
Clean halls for the white folks
In a world satisfied by looking wet.

Ken Siegelman
Brooklyn Poet Laureate
January, 2008