ISLAND CABIN

it's laundry night in the neighborhood
the smell of fabric softener is drifting around like an orchard
a chemical orchard but still
my brother's first wife used that same smelling thing,
the smell of popular americans, total magic.
She was a former cheerleader.
One summer day she encouraged me to try out to be a cheerleader.
I brought my boom box and extention cord out to the pool yard.
She brought her Lover Boy tape
and taught me her moves
when I say hell you say

Laundry actually dries faster here on the line than it does in the machine
but in the new housing developments you can be fined for hanging your clothes on the line.
You want some tasks to be simple private trips I guess
and instead you're looking at a million minor choices at the clothes line
putting complimentary colors near eachother, ugly things in the back
or spread around and diluted with favorite shirts
miniature socks animal towels
but it still feels good

Remember before environmentalism and I guess NAFTA
there was a run of labor movies, Norma Rae, Harlan County, Silkwood, Roger & Me
and then, as it regards farmers, there was Country, Places of the Heart, that other one?
Or would you say the farm movies were more about the rise of corporate power?

that's all really, I was trying to remember a time before green
I know, it's related
and this isn't going anywhere

I watched all those farm movies one summer
and got out of it this:
that it's good to wake up early like the farmers
so when school started in the fall I woke up at five and made my dad eggs although he preferred toast
but after a week I couldn't see the point of being so tired and went back to sleeping in.

my other neighbor's son died in January and I didn't know
he marched on Washington during Reagan.
he's the one who gave me his rusted wheelbarrow last year
some other neighbor's baby crossed the road in front of me, on my bike,
and then a toddler crossed the road but no adult
and they disappeared into a house
and do you knock on the door or keep on your path
at 4th of July we sat next to a man who is a social worker/psychologist
at a medium security prison
fucked up job

another neighbor is painting his house by hand with a brush
even the trim and the woodwork
he is the grounds keeper at the college where I work
his yard is one of the british isles
three neighborhood high wall fences
one new duplex built with white foam? bricks? blocks,
one man in overalls who lives alone whose pit bull died last year
put a whirligig on his lawn.
in election season it's taken up with signs so right of political center
that you can only recognize maybe one name, maybe the governor.
there was a yard sale down the street
one item that didn't sell was a massive entertainment center
it's on their yard with a sign that says $40 obo
it rained and I wonder if they marked it down or threw it away


Noel walked past and said
did you know they are really called poker chits not poker chips
nuh uh. look it up.
some people are bothered by "those ones"
and would rather you say "them" or "those"
but some people don't care
other people want to you roll the die
and some people wish you wouldn't say that


There was a major car crash in the extended family.
Terrible and sad and I don't want to talk about it.