how to clean your house like a 1950s housewife
It lingers in the air
for four – no,
8 hours afterward, and on surfaces it can
Exist for days, depending on the surface, of course -
4 hours on copper, 3 days on plastic, 4 days on wood, 5 days on metal,
5 days on glass, on paper it can vary from hours to days -
Food, water, fabric, shoes,
Counters, tables, handles, toilets, all -
We must
Keep Surfaces Clean
Disinfect all surfaces after touching
Disinfect hands and avoid
Touching
Of your face and others
Whenever possible
happy birthday your hands with soap and water
and wipe down the souls of your shoes
Hinder all the ways
All the ways
Through which the all most conspicuous ways
it can permeate your white body
after contact with the infected
or suspected infected
(for safety assume they’re all infected)
Drink the bleach!
dizzying long-term effects
include but are not limited to
difficulty breathing
fear, anxiety, isolation from ones we loved
i cant breathe -
But never mix ammonia with household cleanser
Shoot up! lyse ‘em -ol
Bolster your defenses
With quickie kleening products
& heroes like Mr. Clean,
Ajax, Palmolive
A tub of bleach,
O, tub of truth,
Twisted by knaves
you must
clean, to be safe - to be sane, like
bleach in-your-veins and
Windex-on-your-windowpane sane
To escape being slain
by your inner fears,
a hostage to your microscopic tears
Of this - this self-assembling body
Of not-body,
Half-living, Half-alive, never dead but never alive because
It was never live
Production of massive macrophage cytokinetic storm
Capable of mass infection
hidden in the crevices
Existing in shadows free rent
In your mind
We incarcerate the blind disseminate the wicked
to stop the spread
Stop the spread and flatten the soul,
a foul odor-
Pests for pesticide
Insects for insecticide
Abomination; it's a nation of vaccination, chloroquine
Genocide
When did
The capacity
To breathe and to remember
Become objects of the state
But we can't forget
What was never ours
No matter how hard you try
It’s a shame you can't
Sanitize the past with UV light
*Inspired by Gerald Barrax Sr.’s “To Waste at Trees,”
Major Jackson’s “Pest,” Toni Morrison’s “Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address,” and Audre Lorde’s “The Brown Menace, or Poem to the Survival of Roaches”