The Spin Cycle

Tropical passion fruit cynicism.
Feeding machines dingy dirt-caked coins
and watching it wash away two weeks
worth of sweat and stink-
the hamper has a life of its own by Sunday.

I reminisce about antiquated methods
of laundry. How housewives and maids
would wipe away filth and grime in the
rivers, basins, and tubs outside.
I can see chocolate stains on a mother's apron.
I can smell death being scrubbed
from an old settler's slacks.

Yet it's laundromats that take me back.
Maybe it's the Sunday funnies, bitter old
station clerks and rose-tinted Downy balls...
When did nostalgia become such a fucking chore?

Years later I'm going in circles trying to understand
why it takes so damn long for pants to dry.
Mom probably asked the same questions,
Questions about detergent,
Questions about dryer sheets,
Hell, the convenience of home appliances.

Questions about others as they navigate their lives
in the spin cycle. Empty eyed, sluggish, sipping
cold coffee, peering at timers over old magazines.

The strangeness of the mundane,
locked in their own temporal terrors.

An elderly smoker struggles to catch her breath.
A divorced man fumbles with socks
he can't seem to match.
A widow solemnly folds her husband's faded red and
black plaid flannel, only before sighing then pressing
a warm sleeve to her cheek...

In the tapestry of mid-American life,
laundromats have their own special patch.

I'm fluent in the language of the mundane,
the tongue of boredom my people
are too ashamed to admit they speak.
I think about this while viewing the
world through the holes in my underwear.

Spin Cycle (audio)

Live Reading: Sylvia Plath - Lesbos

For Kurdt

Blonde haired, blue eyed,
For you my pupils are dyed.
Sappy sifting, the Teen Spirit
gospel of generational endorsement.
My angst is the pedestal,
My savior the woman in white.
Clean up before she comes,
As you are, forever in debt.
I wish I was like blew,
Easily amused.