When I first learned a toilet like that existed
inside the White House, I was horrified.
I took to bed, shut off the lights, and cried.
Brave men who Hancocked history resisted
tyranny for this? What sick and twisted
world where Jesus lived and Lincoln died
condemns its best man’s kingly underside
to such rest-stop squalor? We insisted
that this marbled pantheon include
the needed niches for our newborn god:
ablution, incense, alter, sacrifice;
enthroned, here-housed, untombed, and nearly nude,
Augean-stabled every day, or Moses’ rod
that strike-defies the stone, and makes it nice.