against cleansing

if cleansing be needed for me 
to be clean, i cling then to 
the grime. the grit of sand 
under my nails not interested 
in the fire necessary to make 
glass. i cling to hair grease and 
skin oil, the fat seasoned into 
the skillet. i want 
            to survive 
the holy fire as impure 
as marbling through good 
meat, mixed as vinaigrette 
on leaves of lettuce and 
spinach. let us see sometimes 
a little less clearly: you can 
choose to be the diamond 
cut into symmetry, rinsed 
of blood; i’d rather be 
the coal stuck in the walls 
of your lungs. 

Copyright © 2024 by Marlin M. Jenkins. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 12, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“This poem explores something I think about often, how language that’s typically either positive or neutral can be recontextualized as instances of oppressive violence: settle, defense [of settlement], (ethnic) cleansing. And if poems can do anything during times of witnessing active genocide, maybe they can be moments in which and through which to reevaluate, to rally, to resist—to spit in the face of attempts at erasure.”
—Marlin M. Jenkins