How clean
the thousand surfaces
rivers
RVs and
orange mesas
emerge each morning
rows of privet
clipped and swept
a linen blouse uncreased beneath
the steaming iron

again and again
the world is rinsed
to a scintillant mesh

And still
the faces
gush from arrival gates
throbbing with this
bare imperative
to populate
the shivering expanse
this drive

of the body itself
to slice a space
out of the aggregate
and hold it

at whatever cost of
blood semen money
spit