Tag
ali
Angel of Clean Sheets
Angel of clean sheets, do you know bedbugs?
Once in a madhouse they came like specks of cinnamon
as I lay in a chloral cave of drugs,
as old as a dog, as quiet as a skeleton.
Little bits of dried blood. One hundred marks
upon the sheet. One hundred kisses in the dark.
White sheets smelling of soap and Clorox
have nothing to do with this night of soil,
nothing to do with barred windows and multiple locks
and all the webbing in the bed, the ultimate recoil.
I have slept in silk and in red and in black.
I have slept on sand and, one fall night, a haystack.
I have know a crib. I have known the tuck-in of a child
but inside my hair waits the night I was defiled.
