About the tub: it was the clawfoot type,
white porcelain, slow fill, bronze griffin’s feet.
Under the woozy spell hot water cast
it was the petrified and sleeping gut
of a dead lion, set to come alive
while I bathed in its belly. Let’s say I grew
between the lip and rusted drain for waste.
Let’s say I played at surgery and cut
my birthmark from my chest in there, milked out
the brownish cancer, let it stain the soap
with muddy gore. Or maybe we’d have screwed
when it was empty, spines with fetal curves,
one of our heads hitting the faucet on
and on. I might have gripped the plastic toys
that populated childhood baths and cried
my underwater tears. But now it’s gone.
The tub was no inheritance. It sold
some years ago. Today just naked pipes
are left, sad viscera for hungry dust.
I’ve nowhere to bathe but the earth itself.
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