Member-only story
Speed Queen
a poem
Give me your damp
huddled masses,
limp excuses for socks,
misshapen smalls
caught in a net,
your crumpled, tired shirts,
collars unbuttoned,
and I will tumble them
in my wicked drum,
serving up a hurly-burly
of polyester mix
with pills that may need
pinching off,
my heated breath
having annihilated the last
dregs of responsibility
already rinsed more than once
through a matrix of black holes
by my shuddering sisters.
Stare into my Cyclops
eye and observe your murky
past go by,
those pleading whites
that will never
be pure — no matter
how hard you pre-scrub,
and while you sit
there scanning your phone
pretending to ignore me,
I shall whirl and bat your plastic
shadow’s tangled coda
thrice around the earth,
where fragile things already
dine on yesterday’s spoils,
gushing forth.
I am an engine of disquiet,
heard before a bombing raid,
laundering your arc of poison,
as the great falls dry up,
each paid-for minute
accelerating your…
