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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Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year.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
Sissy Aaron Smith 03/15/2023
Ode to Black Air Forces Bryan Byrdlong 03/14/2023
A Lesson from my Father about Electricity Monica Rico 03/13/2023
[Like a white stone] Anna Akhmatova 03/12/2023
In Imitation of Horace Aphra Behn 03/11/2023
Preparing for Residential Placement for My Disabled Daughter Jennifer Franklin 03/10/2023
Dirk McDermott Patrick Donnelly 03/09/2023
Summer, You’re a Boneyard Gustavo Hernandez 03/08/2023
The Honest Tongue Laura Da’ 03/07/2023
“South of the North, yet north of the South, lies the City of a Hundred Hills” Aaron Coleman 03/06/2023

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