"From the Wash House Files."
This is in a new book called Love Child's Hotbed
of Occasional Poetry.
I won't go into why that title is what it is right now.
I don't have enough time.
On the occasion of washing clothes at the laundromat
and being approached by a woman wearing
a black eye who told me the story of how my hair came
to be.
In your country where you are from,
I don't know what your people say to you when they recognize
you for the first time at the laundromat looking
the same as all the rest of your family with your dirty sack
of laundry and your pencil dangling like one
long forgotten earring.
I don't know what sounds you or your people
make when you are there in front of those big white hungry
machines with their spacious specious open mouths.
In your country, do people only want
to get in and out of the door of the lavanderia
with their stuffed pillow case fat with fresh clothes
and a leftover one half bottle of detergent for next week's
run?
Do your people just want something clean?
Is that all, something to wear without the stain of ink
or tomato sauce for school or work the next day?
Wherever you are from, are you allowed
to catch hold of the eyes of a stranger
while you are there at the lavanderia house of dirt,
working for a cleaner world?
It is after all a place of great wind and water,
which often makes for a faultless and more deeply
scoured conversation.
Is conversation in your country sought after or a clean clothes
without an old stain to mark you used more important?
Tell me.
I really want to know.
Do short and tall people in your country
check the pockets before pushing the small coins
into the thin silver slots before hitting wash?
Maybe your country is just different from mine.
Maybe in your country you are of the kind
that keeps your eyes to yourself while the dirt spins
uncontrollably.
We have people like that in my country, too.
Have you ever noticed the children running everywhere
at the lavanderia wash house and the things
they can find to hide behind?
Inside the lavanderia, it is easy to do three or four things
at once including watch your children hide and play
with bubble water and that crazy wand,
talk about the weather or the price of almond milk going up.
Do they have that crazy plastic wand in your country?
I am not talking about the library
with its quiet demilitarized zone.
What I speak of is the unquiet of the lavanderia house
of agitation, that house of dirt that
is required for our country's clean clothes.
Children running down the aisles in between the spin cycle,
sweating up good for the next load.
I don't know if you even go to the wash house.
You might have your own matching washer and dryer set
right at home.
You might never get to see anybody
who doesn't look like you, someone who
badly needs a roll of quarters.
The last time I was at the lavandaria, 11 farm workers
unloaded themselves from one formerly white tobacco truck.
They walked in, chose a washer carefully
like they were on a date.
They peeled off their nicotine soaked top layers
and dropped every stitch of their workday pants, shirts--
not their socks-- right into the wide open mouth of the washers.
At first I looked away as they undressed
until they started laughing in Spanish at my immodesty.
They waded into the laundromat like a beautiful team
of magicians with nothing to hide.
They in their long one piece white underwear
telling stories of home with the wash cycle churn and--
wash cycle churned and gulped onto the story's shiny end.
I didn't understand the words, but I
did understand their brown bodies soaked in laughter
and kneading their hands to finish their memories
while they grabbed their baskets on wheels
and walked their wet clean clothes to the high up dryers
in just their socks and long underwear.
Their feet made little fish-like moisture
outlines all across the dusty concrete floor.
Do feet do this in your country, too, leave a mark?
I decided the story they were telling the whole lavanderia
was from another time when no one had eyes,
only fingers and laughter.
All of this is told in a foreign language of sweaty sock feet
language.
Does this happen in your country, too?
Have you ever noticed what can pass between people
who don't really know each other when the change machine is
broken but somebody still needs a quarter, $1 in quarters
to finish their load and get back home?
A student of architecture walked in
like he was only there because the storm had
knocked the electricity out in his condo
and he was in a pickle.
He stood way over on the side away
from all the magicians in their sock feet
and me with my dangling earring pencil
from another time and place.
His many books were stacked high between us,
and his box of laundry detergent was
so large it could have washed all the clothes in town.
Behind him in the glass, I could see him drawing a trellis
on his little electronic pad.
Looking into the glass beyond people attending the lavanderia
is allowed in my country.
We do this in order to see over the shoulders and interfaces
of each other's souls.
He never once looked up to see who was around him,
not even when the young mother was a very recent and still
blooming black eye walked in with her four swing dancing
kids and no sunglasses.
Never once lowering her head or looking away,
she caught me staring back at her
at the birth of her new black eye.
Are you OK?
I was just about to ask, but she got her question in first.
Hey, I was going to ask you this last week when I saw you here.
Is all that your hair?
And if it is, do you know that because you wear it
that way that you can speak directly with your ancestors?
No call waiting, no busy signal.
I don't know if in your countries
people speak to each other like this.
I don't know if people in your country speak to each other
at all, especially if one has a black eye
and the other one does not.
I don't know if where you are from people even like going out
of their safe and comfortable homes.
Do people where you live pretend they
don't know what they do when your skin looks happier
than theirs?
Do people in your native lavanderia
stop and smile at each other without really thinking?
Do they say things you never expect
them to say right there while you are steady measuring out
just the right amount of bleach for your favorite white
t-shirt?
I don't know what kind of people you come from.
I don't even know if your people take off their hats when
they come in the door or leave them
on when they see you with that measuring
cup in your hand working hard to keep your white clothes
from mixing with your color.
I don't know what your country taught you about strangers.
If they told you when you were born to avoid them at all cost
because you might be shot in the middle of your eyes
or asked for money or a ride home or any word shared
might make them turn and want to marry your daughter,
maybe you weren't cautioned against speaking
to anyone who doesn't look like you because it might slow you
down from your busy day or rob you of something you never
wanted to be robbed of because you will need it later
after your clothes have dried and you haul them
to your car to drive back home.
I don't know if you ever have seen brown magicians only
wearing white socks or if anyone has ever approached you
with a hair origination story that you need to feel and know
for the rest of your life.
But where I come from, these people
with their unpolished medals for eyes are everywhere.
They smell of bleach and wear fresh black eyes proudly
while their children hide and seek and blow bubbles
and stitch--
and stick out their tongues at that frightened
undergraduate student who pretends he is not
in the country that he is in.
[APPLAUSE]