Devin Gael Kelly - "Sunday at the Laundromat"

Sunday at the Laundromat (from Good River Review)

I’m good at putting quarters in the washing machine.

I make a stack atop the steel & slip the coins from one
hand to another.

I walk away the moment the machine begins to turn.

I drink a beer next door & think about my life.

I want to say the world turns like dirty clothes
around a center, but really the world turns whether
we learn to call anything dirty or not.

Most days, I am scared of loss.

I know I will miss loading someone else’s
underwear into a washer if I ever find myself alone.

The other day, a friend journeyed to his old apartment
to scavenge his last books. The other day, I watched
a dog greet its dog-park-friend by leaping like a demon—
a good one, so beautiful—upon its shoulders.

I love a perfect hug after a too-long time apart.
I love plants that raise their leaves just moments
after being watered. I love how,
if you turn anything towards light,
you might save its life.

There’s something perfect about the warmth of dry clothes.
I want to pile them in a pile, jump together into them.

I remember rain by what it leaves behind:
water on the sidewalks, muddy puddles by the trees.

The world reminds us of everything we might forget.
It says: everything clean must be dirtied again.
It says: you can’t be perfect; don’t try.

It says something about the light
not being able to choose its object.

Deborah Love, from "Annaghkeen"

“…When I was a child I rode my horse to the top of the mountain where the sun shone down on me, and the valley green in meadow grass lay far below. I looked to the sky and waited, filled with longing. Nothing sounded. In sorrow I lay down on the earth, my arms outstretched to hug it. O Earth, warm and just right, everything just right, the shape of bark, and smell of grass, and sound of leaves brushing the wind, I wanted to be just right too.”