Leaving La Lavandería (I)
the drop ceilings are higher than remembered and textured like seashells at the linoleum tables too low to closet sleepwalking superintendence is chronic a consoling discomfort in folding your arms below your chest pressing the small of your back against a rigid beige primary color and finish of Rent-A-Center specials or a clinic sopping up the hospital’s overflow imagine each washer’s porthole pulls a tape along its loop noise pollution worships an evening raga all this change-making a quarter for each sticky palm who knows which pejorative the gumball machine will spigot into your bag where the proprietors have wiped out one tagger’s premature epitaph three more have scored legitimate threats to tinting
Leaving La Lavandería (III)
The kindly old paletero Smuggles ashtrays and Tijuana Bibles past the canine officers Dipping their snouts in the detergent Wild parakeets crow a daily Podcast on the coming eviction Crisis from the monopalm Serving bars to the topper-offers Rodeo clowns peer over Their bifocals as the numbered Instructions buck another ranchera and Smile pockets blister with gore Under international copyright Agreements a common North American Scheme agitates the anonymity of a hand Dumped above the fill line of a tub Frozen custard is too elegant For the prewash compartment Lint silkscreens a handy firestarter For low crocks of arroz con leche Pork dressers in their bouffant-style Snoods flounce armchairs fresh out of The dryer’s rigged tumble but a serape’s fringe Won’t see the other side of hypothermia
Leaving La Lavandería (X)
opinionated garments need not be folded a patrolman’s mask blackly breathable printed with the white directive SHUT UP KAREN scimitar shape of a shit-eating grin with all the camp of a FRANKIE SAYS tee-shirt long as a nightgown commemorative hoodie lifted from a gift shop in Roswell New Mexico in the back you can smell the plaque of decades past colligating like hard water spots on the drop ceiling’s gypsum the owner keeps an old aquarium stocked with desert rocks under bulbs tripping on Grape Fanta they writhe in psychedelic pain SEEING IS BELIEVING I get it I get it I get it the grays are slimy experimentalists their seeing and believing gibbous almonds of voltaic green nectarine-ish culottes pillowcases’ imitation satin washcloths stretched as far as scrubs at warp speed peasant tunic pulled nearly see-through over a third trimester bombshell summer shorts Fiskars-ed out of Goldfinger kink (white uniforms have been known to cause eye strain and headache green reduces eye strain is a calming color associated with peace and healing in fact green has been scientifically shown to lower blood pressure it’s also the color most used on hospital walls) infinity scarves cute cozy relevant official knit of Alan Flusser pocket squares pure herringbone that wants to hide a dipsomaniacal bulge but fails tumble that and be the hanger let the dangling blow kisses and stab at drying in the dark
Leaving La Lavandería (XII)
each washing machine is a darkroom each mateless sock a baby picture its former owner cannot bear to look at any longer you see some semblance of your inexperience caught unaware in the garment’s dingy sagging because I say so but wait wait I want to do more justice to that dinginess to come back to it before we’ve even put it behind us as though it were common litter the battery of chemical cycles that has made this housing for one of our body’s most vulnerable flexures drab and frayed is a kind of light itself closed off in a myrrh-like amber or some other hue good at dodging you see by which I mean you can tell I’ve never really bent my eye to a camera my metaphors all come from books not lived life my remonstrating myself over this fact keeps me reading each washing machine is a decapitated dream in the centerless city thus without peripheries of imitation wicker bushels and waffled hampers brimming with old photographs every self demonically blurry or overcoated in sharp wool holding a smile like a pet rabbit is an idea you can enter and harrow from the hell automatons submit to but only impermanently in this one I am holding the newborn made to appear more porcelain than a doll in this one I am the hammy elevator operator in this one the irreal flash of the button just bumped by a hip and in this one I am the christening gown being rocked by a cradle rougher than the soles of steps retracing steps through the shop floor’s cinders and iron filings
Leaving La Lavandería (XIII)
it’s a distressing mural whose wetness is perpetual whose cycles are life-sized and ape some sequence of sequences running behind the effort left in biology weekends I keep waiting for this chore to be more Calvinist a waiting to which I’ll no doubt lose my wherewithal still in this letup my amnesia is going nowhere amnesia of harvest gold countertops amnesia of a baby brother’s stitched upper lip amnesia of Newhall afternoons half-burned by eucalyptus and the Santa Anas amnesia of seminars in theory dogs snuffling at every leg under the table amnesia of interrogation amnesia of incommensurate cant amnesia of commandeering enough space to bring the sleeves in and collar the hem imagine but do not pretend these brimful automatons all mouth these dismal prodigies represent the sole order we’ve ever known and so that cadet blue neatness becomes regimented tyrannical without statehood yet compatible with all allegiances
By Joe Milazzo