Clean

By: Susan L. Leary

I often worried when I got the call, I’d be unprepared.

But the morning my brother dies, all the good clothes

in the house are clean. So I tell myself to get on with it.

& later, standing over my brother, I think whoever

prepared his body must love what they do. Because he looks

so clean. Cleaner, even, than when he’d doze on the couch

midafternoons to Hank Williams or Johnny Cash.

The fatigue of living wiped from his cheeks. & today,

as then, the same stillness stretched across his eyes.

The same tiny shovels for thumbs. & when I find the strength

to rest a hand atop his, I shake him a little to tell him

I wore his favorite dress: summery & sand-colored with splotches

of blue. & while it seems so symbolic, it’s all rather simple.

I wear a blue-patterned dress because my brother loved

the ocean. & because my brother was lonely & broken,

he couldn’t kick drugs. But I love my brother & the morning

he dies, all the good clothes in the house are clean.

So I tell him: Clean.

---

Susan L. Leary has work appearing or forthcoming in such places as Indiana Review, Superstition Review, Tar 

River Poetry, On The Seawall, Tahoma Literary Review, DMQ Review, and Cherry Tree. She is the author of A Buffet Table Fit for Queens (Small Harbor Publishing, 2023), winner of the Washburn Prize; Contraband Paradise (Main Street Rag, 2021);

and This Girl, Your Disciple (Finishing Line Press, 2019), finalist for The Heartland Review Press Chapbook Prize and semi-fi-nalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize. Recently, she was shortlisted for the Arthur Smith Poetry Prize, judged by Charlotte Pence; a finalist for the 16th Mudfish Poetry Prize, judged by Marie Howe; and a finalist for the Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize, judged by Bernard Clay. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where she also teaches Writing Studies. Visit her at www.susanlleary.com or on Twitter: @susanlleary.