I.
Our lives transmitted through the tendon of the clothesline
its pulley and wire clove hitched
through an oxide-red steel turnbuckle
bolted to the back porch
Our empty, spectral epidermidis
a daily flag earning the subtlest salute from our neighbors:
my mother’s Dacron beautician’s smock with giant coachman’s collar
my father’s blue green boiler suit / his shirts rinsed of their catfish
sweat and Reno aftershave
blouses badged with bird droppings and butterflies
church shirts and blue skirts
twirl and twerk fast and loose;
hand washed lace, silk chemise slips,
elephant sagging long johns, greasy table cloths
flash dried above applauding fruit trees and tiny impact craters pocketing water
II.
A line of laundry flat ironed beneath an unexpected tempest from a black rope of clouds
A storm of salt shaken from the sky.
Sometimes, the season makes the clothesline a burden.
Its green cable becomes a rest stop for dripping robins and blue jays.
Duvets, upper sheets and quilts
would need to be carried down to the laundromat anyway.
I, too, have ruined one wash load or many
after destroying cities of topsoil
by plowing up fistfuls of sand atomized to dust.
All for the joy of smoke and pelting debris
after television’s prettiest explosions
then drying my grimy hands
on the pink towels surrendering above.
III.
Our washing machine’s summer diet
of savory, sweat enhanced t-shirts and hot pants
from a carload of cousins
flaked with corn chips
perfumed in exhaust, sugar, and cheese
Forgiven into cleanliness
beneath a flagellating sun.
Our families skin mingles with every element.
The biometric intelligence
of thread and yarn infused with skin cells
the whispers of a sun crisped towel
whisking beads of shower water from your thighs
its metallic song pulled for decades into extinction.
James Cagney is a writer living in the Bay Area.