Cloacina
Roman goddess of the sewers; considered a cult of Venus.
Toilet goddess,
gentle guardian of filth,
how long you’ve kept your shy chthonic cult
intact, stewarding your wealth
of swill and piss.
The ancients knew
no man can rule the sewer.
That is a woman’s place. That waste land
needs a careful hand to stir
the lonesome goo
and smooth the way
down gently sloping tunnels
through the dark, that dark through which we all
must go. You love the runnels
and all the clay-
brick oozing walls.
You love chunky dishwater
and laundry scum; you love the bloody
drainage after a slaughter;
shit, spoor, and all
belong to you,
Purifier, forgotten realm’s
prudent queen. O lady of the mire,
how you have loved your squalid
children! You, who
see the wreck of
living things, know that nothing
can be made clean from afar. It takes
hands deep in the muck, scrubbing.
You know that love
must go down, in-
to the stinking guts of earth,
and make even them holy. Midwife
to the endless afterbirth
of life, come in
with your strange toil.
Teach us not to turn away.
Teach us to gaze at every cast-off
thing, sit down by it, and stay,
and not recoil.
J.C. Scharl is a poet and critic from Royal Oak, MI. Her poetry has been featured in some of America’s top poetry journals, including The New Ohio Review and The Hudson Review, as well as internationally on the BBC and in several UK journals. Her criticism has appeared in many magazines and journals. She holds a BA in politics, philosophy, and economics from The King’s College in New York, and an MFA in poetry from Seattle Pacific University. She is the author of the poetry collection Ponds and two verse plays.
Amethyst Review 