Other Poets/Other Poems

Anonymous, Issue 17

Antler, Issue 36

Amy Beeder, Issue 16

Boyd W. Bensen, Issue 31

Donna Biffar, Issue 15

Kimberly Blaeser, Issue 27

P. W. Boisvert, Issue 39

Rick Cannon, Issue 28

Jared Carter, Issue 24

David Chorlton, Issue 40

Billy Collins, Issue 1, Issue 18

Steven Coughlin, Issue 39

Philip Dacey, Issue 6

Denise Duhamel, Issue 13

Stephen Dunn, Issue 34

Stuart Dybek, Issue 41

Dave Etter, Issue 14

Norma Hammond, Issue 22

David Hernandez, Issue 23

Susan Holahan, Issue 12

Angela Just, Issue 32

Lisa Kadous, Issue 20

Julie King, Issue 30

Lyn Lifshin, Issue 19

Mary Lucina, Issue 26

Louis McKee, Issue 5

Pamela Miller, Issue 8

Lisel Mueller, Issue 29

Alexis Orgera, Issue 35

James Reiss, Issue 26

Len Roberts, Issue 2

Kristopher Saknussemm, Issue 10

R. T. Smith, Issue 38

Cathy Song, Issue 21

Judith Valente, Issue 37

Charles Harper Webb, Issue 25

Mary Ann Waters, Issue 11

J. D. Whitney, Issue 33

Bayla Winters, Issue 3

Lila Zeiger, Issue 4

Return to Sample Poems

Doing the Laundry

We scribble hopeful notes for months
then call long distance twice a year
on cordless phones. I mop the floor,

and tell my kids to get to bed,
so I can hear her separate
the whites and darks, the stains.

She says her marriage isn't what it could
have been, the bills are piling up,
her kids still drive her nuts. I hear

her voice that measures soap,
the water filling up. She grunts and
stuffs the laundry, stains and all.

We could get drunk, she says, and find
some loud, obnoxious men with hairy
chests and lots of cash and horsepower—

and who would know? She stops
then sighs that turning 30 is a drag,
explaining sex and drugs to kids

that bad is bad and so is good.
She'd like to smoke a joint again,
or flash new clothes of loudest red and green.

She'd like to stop
the thump, thump, thumping of the dryer,
twisting, spinning, and unraveling threads,

the fixing of persistent stains,
the ticking, fading delicates.

--Donna Biffar
Copyright © 1995 by Free Lunch Arts Alliance