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The Washing Machine
by Carol Emerson
lulled you to sleep you said
when you were a child
sharing a room with your older sisters
who liked to tell scary stories.
Sometimes--even now--you toss about restless
without it.
It’s taken years for me to understand
that it drowned out your parents shouting and fucking
on the other side of that thin wall
separating them from the three of you
the whole family’s voice dissolving
into that sound like so much dirt
swirling round and round.
You made your childhood ideal--
Cookie Mommie laughing with her sisters
when you came home from school.
I guess you forget to mention the gin--
Wrote over that child
spray painted your history
like so much graffiti on an alley wall.
These afternoons steeped in whisky
you write of love a dollar a page
to anyone who’ll listen--
anything to escape the steep stairway to that childhood cellar
where your father sipped the fermented juice
then sighted you down his blue barreled steel
hapless rabbit--nowhere to hide.
C Emerson
6/06
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