vacuuming chrome and shadow, hot
air blowing, resting on one knee to extend
the long neck beneath the settee while
it sucks and roars and lurches across the shag
in its hopeless lumbering way, long whipcord
tail curving behind. I look at my face
in the window thinking so this is how
she looks cleaning house. The air is a white
fist. We all breathe open-mouthed, our chests
rise and fall like dogs. I’m the same
inside and out, all the pixels behind my eyes
making test patterns. I don’t remember
when my voice took on its bitterness,
maybe it was the frozen juice in plastic
pitchers, little green oranges giving Florida
the lie. One morning it was there.
Strange how much silence can fit inside
a roar. And the nuzzle of this yearning
in my palm licking my hand. I can
see it now in the raveled threads
the spiders float off the walls, on-screen
the moisture sheen on the upper lip
of the kidnapped girl, the last one left
on the bus with terrorists. What an effort
the vacuum makes to take it in, straining
to ingest sand and dog hair, fishing
line and bits of paper that flutter off
the ends of straws, the anger in the bed
clothes and rough cotton towels. I hear
it faintly all the time, even when it’s turned
off. In the morning when the first birds
carol Sunday school hymns and the mocker
does his take on the robin, it starts up, dull
and droning at another level like another
woman with veined legs in another
house who can’t stop running the vacuum
with all its subtle attachments.