Photo by Gonzolo, retrieved from: https://bit.ly/2S4YZZR

by Marcus Colasurdo

You say you want to know America?
Well, here it is.
I come in off the rainy street —
The spectrum in an oil slick
leads me through
a potholed parking lot
to a mini-mall sidewalk:
4 stores open
2 boarded up.
I jiggle the quarters in my pocket.
A steam squall swells the place’s windows to fog.
Buds n’ Suds.
or Mr. & Mrs. Clean Dreams —
or Zapata Sparkle & Shine
or 655 St. Tumble n’ toil!
You name it,
America will be there.

I lug my sack inside
eyeballing for empty machines:
I find one and plop drop
my silver in the slot,
add powder
and search out a seat.
The plastic chairs are
of the county lockup TV room variety —
one ass size fits all,
narrow and curved just so,
slightly wrong.
The tables are taken by
Dominican moms and their kids:
Toddlers
two, four, six, eight!
Who you want to celebrate?
Girls and boys
cells and toys
and every one of them
shines shy smiles at me,
hence, so do their moms.
A seat is offered
A space is shared.
Spanish sidles up to English,
English asks Spanish to dance.
Music is provided,
4 quarters at a time
By the clanging bang-bang
of the change machine,
meanwhile,
on the tube,
Oprah is opening her earth umbrella.
On the floor,
a dog-eared newspaper
bullets the borders of the world.
On a folding table,
a circular offers autos
detailed by El Maestro;
another one promises nails
salon’d by Ms. Li, the 6th Street queen.
So, you want to know America?
Find out where its women are
at 2 in the afternoon.
Forget the editorials
stomp-stomping the people
whose kids are asking me to play
some weird triple Lego game
on their phones.
Forget your nouns and learn
a few verbs,
forget the time you were afraid
to dark-room dance,
forget the mask
and casino down another quarter —
because everybody aqui
on this open cloud afternoon
has come for the very same reason:

Just to get their shit clean.

Marcus Colasurdo is the author of 11 books. Over the years, he has worked as varied as Los Angeles taxi-cab driver to Job Corps counselor. He is the founder of the Soul Kitchen, a community meals and clothing program (in Baltimore, MD and Hazleton, PA) that currently feeds 400 folks monthly and provides various other much-needed items to needy folks in those communities. He is also a member of  Anthracite Unite. 

Also by Marcus Colasurdo
The Simple Justice of Eating
Unchained Pierogis
Sanitation
Anthracite
Letter of Transit