“Sponge” by Sarah Arvio
Sponge
Soul like a dirty sponge that soaked up all the dark bits
from yours all messed up and mixed in
with the dirt of the days the old hairs and hatefulness
Oh my god I knew there was hate in the human world
but I didn’t know it was the job of my soul
to clean it up How can I clean it up if my soul
is the sponge sponging it up In the end it doesn’t
go anywhere except into my dirtier and dirtier soul
And I say well crying will clean it up but then I’m
bent over crying because my beautiful sponge of a soul
that lay in the depths of a cool warm aquablue tropical
sea with little fishes flitting about in their exquisite
jewel colors and rays of sunshine raying through
has been used to sop up an angry man’s leftover
cruelty yes cruel does sound like jewel and there
should be a jewelty How can I squeeze it out I’ll
need a new sponge but I can’t throw out my soul and if
each tear is one drop of an aquablue tropical sea
maybe I can cry back my sea It’s not so easy
to clean a soul some say weeks and some say centuries
“Sponge” from Cry Back My Sea by Sarah Arvio. Copyright © 2021 by Sarah Arvio. Reprinted by permission of the author and Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No portion of the excerpts may be reproduced without permission in writing from the author and publisher.
Sarah Arvio is the author of night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis, Sono Cantos, and Visits from the Seventh. Her most recent work is a translation of poems and a play by Federico Garćia Lorca, Poet in Spain. Honors include the Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Bogliasco fellowships, and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. For many years a translator for the United Nations in New York and Switzerland, she has also taught at Princeton and Columbia. She lives in New York City.