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  Table of contents Issue Twenty-five DIRTY LAUNDRY
by FAYE S. BRONTIDE		 Home  
   
 

Late night at the Coin Toss off highway 90
in-between a Stop-n-Go and a parking lot

The guttural churning of cycles spinning
stains in an orgy of dyestuffs and solutions

The rows of machines lugging everyone’s dirt
eroding colors, fraying hems, loosening seams

A violent clunking convulses the heavy load
while burning lint and bleach strain the air

The flickering fluorescents never
quite reach the corners of the room

The reddish suds roil, agitating
like the acid in my empty stomach

Most know not to come here after midnight
when the gossip’s residue crust the walls

Like coagulated fibers trapped in endless rounds
of heated stale repeated rotations more dry than

the bones drumming behind the gasket
   
   

 

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Faye S. Brontide is an English adjunct professor who studies Gothic literature by day and writes it by night. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Voices de La Luna, Our Lady of the Lake’s The Thing Itself, and Schreiner University’s The Muse.



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