Deep Cleaning

by Megan Grumbling

With broomstick, plumb between the claws’
dark troth of shriveled dregs and trawl

it out of there, thing, thought, and all
that clings to it, spore–blackened, balled

up, jaundiced: Newsprint grown a mass
of nodes, cragged furrows where the cast

ash–blonde has nested, tumored lobes
ingrowing. Couldn’t be your own

mess, could it; swear you’ve never read
these words by such spliced synapses,

have you, this baby Buñuel
crushed crassly close to Freedom Trail,

sick joke to dithering muse — words honed
on well–lit surfaces, your own

homes’ folios, phrases pronounced
out loud. One rough sweep, and you’ve roused

such bedlam cryptos just beneath
those porcelain surfaces you preen

before, and easier to pitch
the stuff, than to be rid of it.