[domain] [With Cold Water Running through It]
“San Joaquin Valley farmland could continue to sink due to overpumping,
Stanford study finds” by Alastair Bland, Bay City News, June 2, 2022
is it madness when you know it’s madness thinking how beautiful this water
falling from the spigot—like a woman’s silver braid—down the back of
something so sublime I have to use my hand to test the erotics—how it
palm-frays—cascades from fingers—disappears (still cold) heading
toward the drain—0 MINUTES 40 SECONDS—(I confess—I need it warm)—O
San Joaquin Valley—I am naked here—clothes collapsing to the floor
exactly as in an aquifer now all the water in them (me) has been removed—
but not the stink—I’ll do that later—carry the crushed plates of my living—
that aroma—to the Maytag where—Dear Water—you’ll resurrect them
as I will never be double-rinsed again—delicate cycle—cold water wash—
softener added maybe—sipped at and cut as I am by all those fish mouths
inside time—the krill of angular moral living—hiding from Leviathan I think—
therefore loofah—therefore tranquility (lilac fusion bath gel) (I need the therapeutics)
(I use lots of soap)—as if all my poisoned thinking could be cleansed as easily
as a field is cleansed—or riverbed—shedding—in scales and layers—
an exact acreage—a water-borne singing un-gowned in a rush of dead skin
Dennis Hinrichsen’s tenth book of poetry, Flesh-plastique, will appear from Green Linden Press in March 2023. His awards include the Wishing Jewel Prize from Green Linden Press for schema geometrica, as well as the Grid, Michael Waters, Tampa, Field, and Akron Poetry Prizes for earlier collections. Individual poems have received a Best of the Net award and the Third Coast Poetry Prize. He has new work appearing or forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, Posit, and Witness. He lives in Lansing, Michigan, where he served as the area’s first Poet Laureate.
