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  • Washing Your Feet
  • George David Clark (bio)

Reader, they are dirty. You’ve come so farso harshly: bloody miles through silt and brambles,noxious bogs and mud-fields, dunes of charbeneath the sun-spill—all of it in sandals.

Take my chair; this dry, blond Scotch on icewill douse your pride. I kneel to yawn the strapsthat bite your ankles, loose the vamps that viseyour tarsals, slide bruised heels into my lap.

There’s fragrant water in the wooden vessel,sanded smooth and gauged so that your stridecan lose its travel in the lather’s pestleand cascade. You’re no one, and you’re special,drawn to leave before you’re even dried,the paths bathed off revealing paths inside. [End Page 171]

George David Clark

george david clark’s Reveille, published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2015, won the Miller Williams Prize. His recent poems can be found in AGNI, the Georgia Review, the Gettysburg Review, Image, Ninth Letter, Poetry Northwest, the Southern Review, and elsewhere. He edits 32 Poems and teaches creative writing at Washington & Jefferson College.

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