Just Another Tuesday

 

Just Another Tuesday

Like the raven said “I want some more”

so I walked down 7th street 

to the 8-liner lounge,

where purple greed flashed

off our wet eyes as a Puerto Rican

lesbian named Fish and I

fed our rent money into the machines.

The purple neon lights told me

that cacophonous happiness

was just a few pulls away, and 

Fish said her cousin once won

twelve thousand dollars, but

now he’s back to selling speed.

Pockets empty, I kicked rocks

on the walk back home.  The grackles 

with their throats full of stones 

hacked out their laughter, saying 

“he’ll be back some more.”

Every now and then, if I have a lot of laundry to do, I’ll take it to the washateria in the middle of the night when it’s empty.  What takes me three hours at home, I can do in less than an hour.  And my home laundry situation is in my landlords’ basement.  Also, I kinda like laundrymats in the middle of the night.  White noise and watching things go round.  So tonight, the attendant was watching the Telemundo soccer show quietly, and I was watching things go round, when out of nowhere he took his phone out and blasted “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do.)”  That was it. When it was done, he put his phone away and went back to watching TV.  Sometimes I kinda feel like I want to just stop leaving the house.  But if I did, things like that wouldn’t happen.