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let's stay the night

by Gabriel Ricard

They’re supposed to pay him a hundred dollars a week
to open and close the Laundromat
on Victory Dr. It’s been two months,
and he hasn’t seen his bosses since that first day
when they gave him a three hundred dollar down payment.

The money was gone in the first couple of hours.
Paid off to those guys who don’t mind knocking down
a few cop cars to get ahead of the late-night rush hour.

He was hoping for more
and maintains his routine in the face
of beginning to suspect otherwise.

Up at seven-thirty every morning
when the temperature is somewhere between
forty and sixty, it’s only three blocks to the Laundromat,
so he walks every morning to have the place open at eight.

Most of the time
there’s a new tree collapsed in the middle of the street
and the neighbors can’t even wait to get it indoors
before setting it on fire.

Some of them wave at him,
but most have heard just enough
to believe he isn’t to be trusted.

He doesn’t know that,
and he doesn’t wave.

He waits for his hands and face to get cold
and then snaps out of it to walk past the children playing
football on the roofs and in the street.

Bodies and brilliant passes fly around him,
and they can never decided whether to move
in slow or fast motion. It winds up looking like
a couple of universal remotes struggling for control.

He crosses the street quickly.
Cars and trucks have a habit of appearing in mid-sentence
and the crop duster planes trying to land
shoot sparks that reach as high as twenty miles.

He always makes it across. Faith helps,
but it’s probably more complicated than that.

When he gets to the store
he unlocks the door and goes inside
to clean up the discarded socks and beer cans
that he didn’t feel like taking care of the night before.

Three overhead fans are supposed to keep things
at a steady ninety-four degrees,
but only two of them actually work.

If anyone ever came in to do their laundry
he’s sure they would complain.

By eight-thirty the place is mostly clean,
and the day can actually get started. Starting
with getting the shotgun out of the closet
and taking a seat behind what’s become his very own desk.

Nothing has actually come right out
and promised to turn up for a fight,
but he’s been having these horrible dreams lately.
Enough of them that he’s started to get serious
about the more troubling images
apparently stuck on repeat.

Something is definitely rounding
the longest corner in the history of anticipation,
and it’s likely going to be much more than he’s capable
of looking at with open arms.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard

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