2 Poems by Lane Berger: 'Wash and Lysol' & 'Although' - (poetry video)

What can obsessive cleaning habits or our fingers tell us about ourselves? Well, quite a bit. Lane Berger explores both in this beautiful pair of poems "Wash and Lysol" and "Although". Subscribe to the Blank Verse poetry video newsletter here: . For more information on Lane and the full text of the poems, see below.


~~ The Poet ~~

Lane Berger is a writer, editor, and MFA candidate in fiction and poetry at San José State University. In 2018-2019, she served as the Managing Editor and Marketing Director of Reed Magazine, the university’s 152-year-old literary journal. Berger is the 2019 Honorable Mention recipient of The Academy of American Poets’ Virginia de Araujo Prize, and Berger’s writing has been published in Reed Magazine and Inkblot. Berger currently lives in Oakland, CA, with her partner and one talkative Bombay cat. Learn more about her at


~~ The Poems ~~

"Wash and Lysol"

I name each vegetable in cleaning; welcome
water, the vinegar before, and after,
thick soap. I watch my skin pull away from
itself in strangled tributaries. Madder-
red leadings that converge in the soft taut
between fingers, over knuckles. These are
the under-Band-Aids—narrow fissures caught
by rims of coppering scab. I am a mire
at night; tract of Vaseline gum stains,
sweat, senseless itch. I get no sleep for scratching
white veins into the backs of my hands. They
take weeks to heal. I plan around the kitchen,
make tea instead of coffee, palm door handles,
but mostly I cannot stop. I wash and Lysol.


"Although"

No one
asked—my favorite
part of myself is
my fingers.
Not my hands.
They have left, aged
ahead to fault
and shine of uncountable veins.
Yet I still
covet digits
blue beyond cold
to browning knuckle.
Thin and warty. Practical
nailbeds for a practical girl
in navy
front-buttoned wool.
Even now, I push pencil,
everything manual
first. My fingers are
the best of me.
The rest might break
even conditionally:
that I wake and am
kind to you, that I wake
and am kind,
that I wake.


~~ The Film ~~

Produced by Blank Verse Films
Filmed by Mike Gioia
Edited by Mike Gioia

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