“How to Clean the Hallway” is a poem by Soheon Rhee, age 12. The poem is written in the form of a how-to list and is composed of seven numbered instructions. Each instruction is between one and two lines long, and most are made up of between one and two full sentences with capitalized first words and “standard” punctuation. It is written in the second person, and generally in the imperative mood.
The poem begins by instructing the reader on how to scrub a floor, but the instructions quickly become odd and almost nonsensical. The description of the puddle on the floor begins to resemble a body of water. The “you” of the poem is told to coat the wall like a coastline and to sit by the edge of the water, a slippery phrase that later connects to a much larger body of water—the lake outside. Midway through the poem, the “you” leaves the hallway altogether, and the poem begins to tell us what can be seen out the window. The world of the poem suddenly expands: we see birds reflected in a lake, gardeners trimming trees. This sudden departure from the interior feels almost like a daydream. At the end, the poem instructs the “you” to go and finish breakfast. It’s unclear if the “you” is meant to be cooking or eating breakfast.
How does this poet play with poetic forms?
This poem is written in a unique form: it’s a how-to list. When a writer uses a novel form, they often have to “teach” us how to read it by establishing the rules for the form in the poem. The poet does something interesting here: she invokes something that most people know how to read: a list of instructions. But immediately, the poet begins to mess with our perceptions about how a list ought to function:
- Scrub the wall to form froth, then coat it with water like the coastline after a wave.
Usually, cleaning instructions wouldn’t include a simile. This immediately changes the tone from the space of a usual list. Even so, though, this does contain an instruction. We move on to step two.
- Soapy water will slide down to the floorboards. Sit down at the edge of the water, hold your shawl with one hand, and dry the floor.
Though the writer could be talking about the puddle formed in step 1, the language engages in an interesting doubling here. “Sit down at the edge of the water” evokes images of a beach or riverbank. It is somewhat unclear whether the shawl is meant to dry the floor, as the poem mentions no particular tool for drying the floor. This type of ambiguity recurs throughout the text and helps evoke a dreamlike atmosphere within the poem.
By step five, the writer breaks the unspoken “rule” of the poem—that the list of instructions will actually be doing any instructing. Instead, we are plunged into reverie:
- By the window, you can see the gardeners trimming the trees below, one of them leaving for a break.
Perhaps one step to cleaning the hallway is not cleaning the hallway. Even so, the sentence feels startling without an active verb—almost like the poem itself is daydreaming with the “you.”
- The lake to the side reflects the birds flying around in chains, as if trying to clasp the sides of the sky.
Before, the poem’s daydreaming had been concrete—images of what was going on downstairs, outside. But now, we are taken into a more abstract, image-heavy space. The image of the birds in chains across the sky is both lyrical and a little ominous.
Finally, we land where we started, in a strange sort of instruction:
- After cleaning the walls, make sure to put new soap in the tray below. Go inside the corner room to finish today’s breakfast.
There is such a specificity to “the corner room” that as readers, we almost forget that we don’t know where that is. At the same time, there’s a real unfamiliarity too. What does “finish today’s breakfast” mean? Are we meant to eat it? Prepare it? Clean it up?
Discussion questions:
- What do you think the purpose of the nonsensical instructions is?
- The poem often flits between images—waves to soap, sky to walls. Are there any such transitions between different images that particularly stood out to you? Why?
How to Clean the Hallway
- Scrub the wall to form froth, then coat it with water like the coastline after a wave.
- Soapy water will slide down to the floorboards. Sit down at the edge of the water, hold your shawl with one hand, and dry the floor.
- Be careful not to get water in between the tiles.
- Pull out the brush from the cleaning cart, its drawers tiered like bleachers.
- By the window, you can see the gardeners trimming the trees below, one of them leaving for a break.
- The lake to the side reflects the birds flying around in chains, as if trying to clasp the sides of the sky.
- After cleaning the walls, make sure to put new soap in the tray below. Go inside the corner room to finish today’s breakfast.
Taguig City, the Philippines
