Erica Ehrenberg, 'Bruno Sits on a Washing Machine'

[duathir]

Cross-post from war_poetry:

Bruno Sits on a Washing Machine

Bruno sits on a washing machine as though its engine will get him out
of the country, the county, his head. The darkness outside the plate
glass window suggests that California has burned to black
while the prairies are overrun with pioneer wives out of time
carrying rifles. Bruno can sense that the pelted animals
are in danger. He can feel from his vibrating perch a strange tug
of land rolling down a rock face, back into the ash
from which it sprung. The women in the prairies
have been alone too long and they are cold. Their men
have been lost to the wilderness and return
having killed with cruelty. Bruno tries to imagine the death
that floats in the air out there in the parking lot, buried
by bulldozers and tar. In the arms of banished ghosts
the women driven mad by loneliness and the constant lack of certainty
are carried like abandoned orphans back into the cliff-side convents
of the old world where people are given brooms to sweep
their conquests out of their minds.

By Erica Ehrenberg