SOUL’S SONG OF FILTH

from “The Hygienist: An Amorality Play”

Soul (sings):

Soul is sorta
God’s filth wheel
stuck rolling
thru the mud—
love’s my substance
and all I spoke
has rolled a line
right thru

Soul I smell
like hell & yes
I’m rich
in the spirit-sewage
& wildlife’s
fugitive movements—
evasive bitch
is what God calls me
& he calls again
as I sit in skin
to avoid him—
but he can’t make me visible
though at his whims I spill
like piss on the suncracked ground

I am defamed
& made of dirt
wiped from the holy highway
lively roadkill bones
of animals flattened
& baptism even
can’t clean me up
to a virgin’s purity:
for I am

the dung & the daughter
of God—the sow
that wasted her shameless
self then washed
but couldn’t stop

diving back to the mud,
pigsty vile
but divine
as all sublime things are—

and wheel-like I
worm thru the dirt
& overturn it,
roll thru the city’s
shitty streets
& potholes full
of crystal critters

O

all my righteousness
is a leaf: gleaming life
& veinwork ready to wreck
and rot and set out soil
for anger malice wrath all that
filthy speech and blasphemy—
Dear auditor,
 spill me out

Jackson Watson is a writer and translator from Georgia. They live in Providence now, where they work as a wildlife rehabilitator and serve as a poetry reader for Nat. Brut Magazine and Tyger Quarterly. Their work is published or forthcoming in mercury firs, Fence, DUNCE CODEX, and elsewhere. @iamthedogiam