Some say poems should appeal to the senses, frequently seeing or hearing. This one is about touch. I feel my fingers all around in it. And the only word that doesn't feel right -- feels too contemporary -- is "kids."
Cast off those husbands at the tavern, drag those kids to the
foundling house, & come live in my convent of cleanliness,
sisterhood of thorned habits, thistle sandals, rawhide girdles. Silent
toil will be your rule as you stoke the copper vats, starch wimples
to discipline. Bleach will smother like honey your pruned-up hands.
Your bare knuckles will rasp washboard Te Deums. Want to be
the Bride of Christ? Pain alone can lure his love. The cloistered
coquette learns to flirt by flagellation, wears a goat-hair negligee,
primps with quicklime, red pepper. She distrusts spectacles, demands
caustic benedictions. She has no need of priests in gilded chasubles
or altar boys dancing with silver crowns. Holy is her laundry water
at workday's end, her chapel sooted & clotheslined, her soap
sacramental, lye from Lenten ash.
I feel you speaking.