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Poem-a-Day

The only daily poetry series publishing new work by today’s poets.

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Poem-a-day

There are inanimate things out there loving each other

the way that soap loves an airborne virus. 
Wants nothing more than to whisk it all away. Half fragile 
as water, half hydrophobic wildchild. Doing it daily

as thirst trap. Posing in the fat of fruit. in the lipid 
of a milking cow. It’s unfair to say

it’s afraid of anything. Hunting virus by riding hydro. 
Mobbing the scene in micelle. Trailing pond for a bond. 
Shooting its shot near the nearest swarm of greasy tail. How 
good it is at pulling every germ. Every dirty little frag. 
Every bacterial bevvy. 
                                         Loving it all 
to its silky death. to its silty bottom. to its graywater demise. 
How it hungers the virus until neither function. Melting its thick 
heart and ripping it all away.

Little soap bar playa. Little Dionysian pump of cupidity.

                           Oh, to desire virus 
                           to death. To take it dizzy 
and broken down through the falls. 
Slow soaping the sick

from our living, 
wet hands.

Copyright © 2025 by francine j. harris. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 26, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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francine j. harris

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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Omotara James is the Guest Editor of June. Read or listen to a Q&A with James about her curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
Neoteric Kama No Sutra Frank X Walker 02/23/2023
Boihood Jari Bradley 02/22/2023
Self-Care Faylita Hicks 02/21/2023
her aint even at de funeral avery r. young 02/20/2023
Plácido’s Farewell to His Mother Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés 02/19/2023
The Eyes of My Regret Angelina Weld Grimké 02/18/2023
The Lose Your Mother Suite VI. “across the surface of my studied speech” Remica Bingham-Risher 02/17/2023
St. Valentine, Bishop of Terni, probably beheaded, was also the patron saint of asthma, beekeepers, and epilepsy, so he might have said Lynne Thompson 02/16/2023
An Act of Love Tommye Blount 02/15/2023
Wetland francine j. harris 02/14/2023

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