She Still Owes Me


The desert started behind her back fence
wooden slats that couldn't hold the drifting
sand, squat ugly houses all the same
on the grid of streets past the gate--

Navy base on the hot lake bed, dried
for thousands of years, the better to practice
low bombing runs— Desert Storm 
looked like this. Her husband was usually

absent— he loaded the bombs onto the plane's
underbelly while his wife, mousy, thin
brown hair, raised the brats, offered me pie— 
it sounded like a drawn-out pa— and whites

whole bottles of them, as in 'wanna take whites
'n stay up with me all night? — I demurred
and then she got pregnant with a guy down
at the car wash and her husband split but the baby

came defective. She was desperate for it to live
even a year, borrowed $200 from me for hospital
bills. I never saw her again, the sand blowing
up the porch, plastic toys buried, the whites gone

one baby died, another grew wondering about
loading bombs under Navy jets, desert runs
all look the same, the sun still pounding, car wash
closed up, she's back in Florida with Eunice

it's hot there too though the sand doesn't blow
against the back door and she never makes pie.





At the Laundromat


Always in a poor run-down strip
mall at the far end of town, a converted
pioneer apothecary’s, old wooden slats
now covered in vinyl veneer peeling
from years without paint, next to 
a liquor store with bottles locked
behind glass, a few cans of spaghetti
on a sagging shelf, a man bought one
with a pint of vodka, Mexican laborers
scratching their lottery tickets.

Inside the Asian proprietor keeps anxious
watch over signs hand lettered in Spanish
warning not to wash blankets or use too
much soap, single men tend faded blue
jeans, work shirts, one bath towel, a family
with children playing on the dusty floor
check four washers and a woman 
in the back corner sits on a cracked chair
crying silently, her shoulders sloped
in defeat, sobs bursting out through
gritted teeth.

Alone she stares at the TV without
recognition, sunk into some private
tale, the children stare before going
back to their games, she isn’t watching
any laundry but churns the dust under
her coat into muddled footprints.

Finally the old Chinese man approaches
and asks, you need me help? so she stands
shaking her head, grabs a shapeless
plastic purse, wipes her face on her sleeve
walks out with a gasp of air into the cold
winter evening, ending the drama
between the final rinse and the dryer bins.