Darren Morris

We used these long wands,
scythes attached to wide flat heads
that when you gripped the handle
would spray hot chemical
when released 
sucked it back out
of the wet carpets on late night 
Commercial jobs: Anheuser-
Busch, Purina, Famous
-Barr, over the greased highways of footprint.
To lift the filth of impounded anxieties,
the spilled stain from a million strangers,
we inhaled the past, 
cloistered there,
stacked in graves 
or in anchorless moments of touching
& releasing. 
We huffed their ghosts,
shot them through long tubing
& posited their slops
in the bellies of our machines.
Our clothing stank of them.
We only noticed how tired it made us 
when we returned to the shop
& stood at the mouth 
of the bay where it opened
to the night, the slow traffic
up on Manchester 
& shared a beer but no words
before heading home.

Darren Morris is an artist living in Richmond, Virginia, who has lost much of his sight to retinitis pigmentosa. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and his poems can be found at Raleigh Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Apricity Magazine. Poems are forthcoming at Southern Indiana Review and SWING.