--- G R E G O R Y   D J A N I K I A N

So he comes in, says he's got 
what we need, hoses, couplings

all you want 
to make this a home 

sits on a crate in the middle
of no furniture no rugs

just a film of dust on everything 
like incense or fallout 

and out come his bags and brushes
out come the filters and wands  

he throws dirt on the floor, scatters coins
tosses confetti in all the corners

says This is for the little woman
and flicks the switch and the sudden vast

intake of air is something we've never heard
the floor humming like an electric grid

everything unsightly sucked up  
as if it had never been, cobwebs on the wall 

dust on the photographs of great-aunts and -uncles 
peering out from a desert of silence

breakages and spills undone grains of salt 
shattered glass in the deepest crevices 

The power of technology! he shouts
above the whirlwind of cleansing

skimming over the floor from wall to wall 
every shred every obstacle removed

surfaces so unblemished that for days after
we can brush our fingers along the baseboards, sills

over the faces of every photograph
without making the slightest mark.