Robert Feather
The Washing Machine
The washing machine was caused by a thunderstorm.
Is it not a psychiatrist in a white coat
who’s overcome the turbulence,
been refined in a white heat
and now knows how the circuitry works?
Does a hush not fall among the cutlery
in the theatre while the surgeon
remembers the next step, and clicks
a little while the swabs soak
and while the anaesthetist leans over like a fridge?
Are we not stealthily approached
on all sides by sumo wrestlers
whose stillness makes them invisible
as they stand four-square with barely a quiver,
strangling a few clothes?
First there was the land of square women,
the Nile, and the wet cotton slapped on rock,
the priests in the home with hieroglyphs,
the sacred instruction manuals, then the spacewalker
floating into the kitchen on an umbilicus.
Page(s) 17
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