LAUNDROMAT

My mother would round up my brother and me,

Laundry baskets on her hips,

Like the National Geographic portrait of a mother

Carrying water

And her babies

We would march foot by foot

in the scorching heat

to the Laundromat

At the bottom of the hill

Of the apartment cul-de-sac.

The hill was massive.

It would be slick with ice and snow in the winter

And the big kids would sled down it

On homemade toboggans

Made of cardboard boxes

And laundry baskets.

Little rocket ships

For the poor kids.

We’d dive to the bottom

and ricochet across the parking lot

whеre the hill openеd up into lawless concrete and pavement.

The wind would slice our cheeks raw red like sushi.

And beautiful girls

with beautiful button noses

turned pink like peppermint candy

would cheer from the landing.

In the summer the hill wasn’t so charming.

My little brother is dragging his sneakers across the curb

nasty little thumbsucker

He used a pacifier till he was 5

And even as he slept,

his mouth would pucker and suck on nothing

Oedipus baby. Mama’s boy.

I spit mine out the first time someone tried to put it in my mouth

I wouldn’t be silenced

Infanticide!

We are marching

To the Laundromat.

We arrive and immediately

I run to a familiar friend.

A big black cracked leather couch

with yellow stung seeping from duct-taped holes.

It looks like a giant monster

in the dark corner under the decaying lights.

I stick my arm inside

And fear large teeth will bite it off at the elbow.

I imagine myself pulling out my arm

and it bleeding like a stick of salami.

The first time I ever saw a whole lot of blood

was when my babysitter Jessie

invited her friends over to my house

while my mother was at work.

She told me to shut my trap

and she’d let me watch any movie I wanted on TV.

I picked The Shawshank Redemption.

They sat outside the apartment complex

and 3 boys arrived and smoked cigarettes on the porch

One girl came inside.

She was bleeding between the legs.

Dripping in thick strips like the syrup

I used to make strawberry milk

She asked to borrow a pair of pants

I was half her size

I pictured her bleeding legs

and imagined my arm dripping with the same crimson.

I waved my pretend amputated stub around

screaming for my mother.

She didn’t turn around.

She threw our still-damp clothes in the basket

And we marched back up the hill.