Drycleaners

At the drycleaners I stand in line, my feet

shuffling weight from side to side,

impatience all over me while the woman,

light brown, with her Creole story drones on.

In New Orleans none would notice.

She’s exotic in Baltimore, a dawn bird

everything hears. Even the clerk

leans into her tale, clucking softly. When

people behind me cough, she won’t be

rushed. She’s got her whole story to go.

Soon there’s a man she never married,

her mother opposed, far away still, and he

went into a bar, wrong place, wrong color,

wrong words, maybe, a good man.

He’ll never come away of there, not comin’

home, geraniums on the back porch,

and not replace the bad tire her Honda has,

who could always be telling her what time

does in the kitchen if she stand half

naked letting his dog go on out. So

let me pay you for him, give you money

because you is nice and I remember,

her nearly singing voice sighs. The sleeved

pants, two shirts hang on the brass ring, all

finished, unclaimed, the stiffened

stains gone away. The perfectly starched

cloth a redemption so beautiful

it might be the linen of royalty, but small

for a man two of us will think of as

sleep scuffs house walls like tide under a boat.

How nice they are, these women doing

the little one person can for another

which is, in the end, a wash

of memorable words that leave you standing.