Laundromat: July 10, 9:47 AM
by Steven McCabe
I’m in the
laundromat
because my dryer broke
and this radio is too loud
and every song sounds insincere –
finally Annie Lennox and
the Eurythmics are singing
Talk to Me.
I wonder when I’ll ever
get around to reading
Ulysses.
The radiator is painted
an almost indescribable
shade of turquoise.
Lively but dead serious –
mechanical.
The top of each rib protrudes
thin, flat and sharp.
I can imagine these edges
pressing into my face
after they arrest me in the
grand sweep.
Harnesses and 19th century
contraptions hoisting the radiator
above prisoners strapped to beds.
Thirty full seconds for each
inmate.
What if they decide to heat them?
Loud sirens nearby.
A city wind blowing
through the open door.
A guy reading a
book asks me
if I smell
cigarette smoke.
“No.”
A bit of paranoia where the rinse cycle becomes the flood and you find yourself dowsing for land. A bit of paranoia when the full moon above is melanite as you shuffle through a lineup for clean clothes on visiting day. You twist the knob on the change machine. You open a box of dry powder and spill half. Your new plan involves having a notebook and walking where you can hear birds. Later you’ll put on iTunes and listen to Bob Dylan sing Copper Kettle. You escaped what you never should have escaped.
This is somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous, between the rarified and the mundane: Ulysses, a radiator.
(i love the poem, Steven: it works!)
Bach, basketball… the rarified (the Virgin Mary) and the mundane (earthly life).
(Godard started by jump-cutting the image in the 1960s. Now he abruptly chops the sound!)
Hello Prospero, I loved that Godard film clip! And only wish I spoke French. But I get the sense of juxtaposition and love it. Thanks for your reply/insight and enlarging the overview. I didn’t deliberately plan to play off Ulysses/Odysseus (Joycean & myth) as a theme. It just happened fairly quickly. I wrote the poem and did the drawing while my clothes dried. The siren as… one of the sirens and the prisoner strapped to the bed/ship’s mast was ‘idea’ speaking out subconsciously and I didn’t realize it at the time.
Your mind tumbling around like the clothes in a dryer. Love it, Steven! : )
Creativity is everywhere.
Hi Karen, yes, I think you’re right… like a tumbleweed….in the heat…fermenting buds and flowers…Thank you for your thoughts/images…
This is a good poem, Steven! You know, I am the same about Ulysses. Only I am leaning now into not reading it at all. I have a feeling it is too male to be enjoyed.
Thank you about the poem sunnysmile. If you feel that way about Ulysses there’s a good chance your intuition is telling you not now.