‘Laundry Manifesto, Unspoken’

Photographic - Tobi Brun

Laundry Manifesto, Unspoken

What comes of a button front shirt

Fluttering in the wind

            On a line

            Dancing like a porcelain

            Girl

            Shining legs exposed

            Brazen in this fertile

            Sun

Taken

            Polished finger

            Tips

            Spreading

            The wooden

            Mouths

Send the

Sheets

Falling

Layed flat

Across warm board

            Fabric touching

            Fabric

Dusting white

Snow

            Shatter to the

            Lapelled

            Collar

            Broken tails

            Of a bombshell

The act of

            So lovingly

Plucking paper

Boxes

Full of the

            Fatal

Powders

To be adorned

            The dressing

            Table

Despise the

Inequity

            Maroon sweater

            Lying

            Unalive

            In the arm chair

            Killed maybe

            By its own

            Cotton membrane?

Spoon the iron

            Killing machine

Burning seams

Flat

To stretch again

            Be pressed level

            Once more

            By another set of

            Of noonly

            Hands

Finally

In my last ditch

Attempt

            Thwarted

            Always

            By the impenetrable

            Steam

            The choking

            Starch

I throw limp

Dusted

man 

            Body absent

Into the

Dryer

Heat up

            Wait patiently

            For it

            To Shrink

Costello Keene is an undergraduate student at Slippery Rock University, where she majors in secondary education English and minors in writing. She has been previously published in multiple young writers' anthologies and acts as the assistant editor for The Slab magazine. Costello has been writing ever since she can remember and could not imagine a world without it.