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Column 674

Laundress

Intro by Ted Kooser
02.18.2018

One thing I’ve tried to do with this col­umn is to show off poets who do indeed write about con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can life, and who see deep into the ordi­nary parts of it. Here’s a fine poem by Heid Erdrich, who lives in Min­neso­ta, about doing the laun­dry. It’s from her book Cura­tor of Ephemera at the New Muse­um for Archa­ic Media, pub­lished by Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Laundress

Given over to love,
she un-balls the socks,
 
lets fall debris of days,
leaf litter, sand grain,
 
slub of some sticky substance,
picks it all for the sake
 
of the stainless tub
of the gleaming new front loader.
 
Given over to love long ago, when her own
exasperated moan bounced off
 
the quaint speckled enamel
of the top loader
 
vowing: she'd do this always and well.
She fell in love then, she fell in line—
 
in a march of millions, you pair them,
two by two, you marry the socks.
 

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2017 by Heid E. Erdrich from Curators of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media, (Michigan State University Press, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Heid E. Erdrich and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.