ooga booga - DANIEL GUO '28

I am writing

When my mother whirrs up the washing machine

It is around this time

That I hurl my bad poetry at mother’s

Hands; but she is careful not to spill

the spoiled words unfurling

Latching like bleach.

It is also this hour when mother

cries lavender detergent

Dried in bleeding indigo.

It is time to rummage

my fingers inside anger’s belly–

Tossing big words out the laundry bag.

whose shirtsleeves are

Stained with pasta.

So yucky.

It is now when I dump out the

poetic phrases that pool into a wet glob

Fresh from the washing machine.

There is watery fluff stuck in between the font–

scraps from unturned pockets

Documenting a child’s vocabulary

A few dangling consonants here

And there, half-soggy crayons

That I have to dig for between damp heaps.

It is this moment that

I need to be thrown out of this stench

Gargling up smudged adjectives

For these poems

That I resent!

I will be pants! Tumbling

Splattering against color

Fish-eyed twirling

With tide pods.

Yes. I will cram inside the washing machine

Mother can go in the dryer

She can throw in my poetry too

Rearranging until perfection

Mother and I,

Spinning in opposite directions.