Cross-legged in black corduroy,
I face unseeing whitewashed brick.
Distorted globular pipes of tin and tape
puncture a boarded window socket,
the dull dead skullcaps of two dryers.
I sit on the rightmost machine which,
trembling in perpetual shock,
judders beneath me, in frozen roar and pummel.
My body moves ever so slightly with it
as the water and the rush and the foam
scrape the week away.
The room is filled with a dual humming.
Linoleum and socks like so many molecules
warming, abrading each other.
Pink and white flesh, the smell of soap
and coconut oil, two glossy eyelids:
a breath. A cycle. A shudder.