Monologue in a Laundromat
Karri Harrison
I come here often. And on occasion I’ve seen you gently turning
bills into coins and coins into water and heat. Morning
after morning has arrived bandaged, crushed, and weak.
Days lie with their tips turned in, still as damp as hands
dreaming of rudders, anchors, oars. I only dreamed that we’d ever
have a chance to talk like this. Now picture this: A figure lying
in layers like rock, in layers like a road which cracks under the sun
or without it. It could be my body, and because it was naked
it hardened and froze. Under February’s stupid stare one might
say, "the skin of a lake," and one might continue, "Birds drop
like fists against it." You must think I’m drunk, but I guarantee you,
it is only our clothes that are spinning. Please excuse the assertion.
I tend to make assertions. "Trees, they are burdened
somewhat solidly," I assert. And: "Like a lake, I keep record
of those I’m touched by." Against me the first hand lowered roughly,
as if claiming its meal, while five young dogs stood imagining the scraps,
themselves broken but not broken. Don’t worry, my new friend,
I would never compare their fragility to yours. I see the way each tiny bone
in your foot adjusts to your standing. But as we were sharing just now,
I have to admit, I became distracted. Whatever is important now
is making its move, straining not to lose its handful of whatever,
trying so hard not to forget the subtle taste of blood which is only
the beginning of a lesson on stirring. If you want an apology now, then any
excuse could be a lesson to you. If you demand, then I’ll give you my stone
fountain of an answer: You slipped my mind, that is, I just
forgot all about you. This particular lesson is fished out of someone else’s
lake, and you’re right, it is smuggling, but the trout are longer and more
slender than my own, and if it means anything, the hook was mine.
Don’t leave now, for your clothes’ sake, and besides, my thoughts turn
back like an arrow: The shivering lives of a pigeon crowd
a billboard’s uppermost rim. There is a decoy in their midst,
and they are unaware. Along the streets much is unaware, and much
doesn’t see men collecting aluminum at night. Similarly, leaves
don’t know what goes on beneath their little skeletons. It occurs to me now
that I want tears to bloom in your eyes for what you can’t see. But don’t
worry, even warriors supposedly doused the sand with their sorrow once
and turned it to rock. That type of fire neither burns nor goes out. And once,
you watched a spider leave the run-down web she’d been in forever to build
a new one, smaller. Not noticing my watching, she laid her eggs there, feeling
alone. What can we do? My own defense is what you might call surreal:
My face is painted, and underneath it is a throbbing fist.
Tables of Content
Seventeen (Fall 2003)
Sixteen (Spring 2003)
Fifteen (Fall 2002) Fourteen (Spring 2002)
Thirteen
(Fall 2001) Twelve (Spring 2001)
Eleven (Fall 2000)
Ten (Spring 2000)
Nine (Fall 1999) Eight (Spring 1999)
Seven, (Fall 1998) Six, (Spring 1998)
Five (Fall 1997) Four (Winter/Spring 1997)