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My opinion is that some go there with weeks worth of dirty laundry and take up too many washers & dryers.            

Others come and empty the change machines for their poker games or parking meters, then leave.

At least one has stolen a nice sweater, when they thought no one was looking. They put it with their laundry, got in their car, and left. I took a license number.

There is a shy man who sits on the window ledge. Looks at you like a puppy and smiles as you enter or leave. It’s unsettling.

Once, a hundred-dollar bill was found in an otherwise empty dryer.

Another time, a bag containing a large piece of shit was found in a dryer when a person was taking their clothes out. They had to rewash and dry everything.

Some just sit on the chairs and don’t speak at all, and don’t read. Only stare. It’s unsettling.

Some come there, and their side gig is meeting new people. They chat you up when you’re the one who’s sitting and staring. It’s unsettling.

There’s a sign on the door that says, “This door locks automatically at 11pm.” Does that mean you are trapped inside if you’re late getting out? What if you have two or three loads to take to the car, but you’re locked out before you can get the last one? It’s unsettling.

~ Though ugly are those thorny trees
with octopussy limbs,
—I say they’re Kings of Forestry-
conductors of its hymns.~

Forgetting the landscape of shaving, I run the razor sidewise, coaxing a bleed. We have forgotten Corinthian love, or never knew it and wonder if it exists. Wounds, we have, unsalted but unhealed.

Meg had put it from her mind for too long. Today was a day of change and of ending. Which way…which way? Long she had walked. The further away she got from grasping hands and tearful faces, the greater grew her resolve. “God, forgive me.” she thought.

[Art by Deb Garlick]

I whistled well when I was young-

An artifice of breath and tongue.

It ruffled almost everyone,

Save you, my funny shadow.

I met you in the grocery aisle

Unwitting of your secret smile

I hummed a tuneful ditty while

I squeezed an avocado.

Funny- how you had the nerve

So forward, and without reserve,

And scant I felt did I deserve

Your words of inspiration.

You asked me “Can you whistle too,

Or sing a silly song or two?”

And, blushing as I said, “I do”,

I paused, in hesitation.

And so, you said “Not many men

Can pull it off like that”, and then

You walked away, and that was when

You turned around, still smiling.

So, blushing still, I hoped that we

By happy Serendipity

Might meet again, for so you see-

Your smile is so beguiling.

Joey spoke to himself behind his mask of mute. People didn’t make sense anymore. He was in singsong thoughts, and all that was reaching him was the rising scent of his scrambled eggs and the underwater music of voices. Colored, they were, and in his mind he swam.

***

Art: “My friend Pierrot”, by Max Ernst

In we stayed, us kids, during the short days of that long winter, while Grand Dad saw to the animals and smoked his pipe. Well, what can you do in feet of powder snow in the flatlands? Not even good for a fort. Checkers. Cards. We fought. We read in kerosene light.

***

Art: Winter landscape. Neskuchnoye, 1910, by Zinaida Serebriakova.

In paint, you have described my dreams as if I were your ancestor and you had come across dusty tomes of them, written in too-early wakings. And it’s so odd and pertinent that the visions are all Untitled, yet seem to have come from my own cold rooms, leaving blanks on the walls.

***

Art: “Untitled”, by Zdzislaw Beksinski

Painting by Jose Basso