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Tales From the Laundromat
I
enter the laundromat clutching clouds,
am
greeted by cumulus steam
A
radio crackles in the background
like
a distress call from somewhere out at sea.
On
all sides, wobbling white and grey monsters
churn
and belch and shake the room.
On
wooden benches sit expressionless robots
of
all races, some staring at the wiles
of
the hypnotist spin,
others
slowly turning limp pages
of
year-old People Magazines.
I
look about for the one machine at rest
but
eager to join the others in noise and reverie.
A
few coins, some soap powder later,
and
I am on that same bench,
but
pulling a squashed-up paperback from my pocket,
Kafka’s
“The Trial”, the sweat-stained coffee-spill edition.
“What
you’re reading?” asks the guy next to me.
“It’s
the story of a man arrested and tried
for
an undisclosed crime by a remote inaccessible
authority,”
I reply.
The
man fades into the pages
of
a Sports Illustrated.
“Of
course everything stems from
his
inner self,” I add.
My
words are drowned out
by
the clang and bang
of
sheets fighting back against
the
greater forces of cleaning and rinsing –
my
purpose here after all
if
not my interior work
John Grey
John Grey is an Australian poet, US
resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Sheepshead
Review. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside
The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary
Review and California Quarterly..