Spin Cycle

how are your clothes? are your colors bright?
you don't want no dingy colors, right?

wash'em with Tide, wash'em with bleach
separate by color in piles of each

red wine Rorschachs on your whitest dress shirt
those blue jeans you love with deep ground-in dirt

how long has it been since you washed all nine bras?
the other eleven you burnt for the cause

how many socks sit forever unmatched
like those pictures of boys back in college you catched?

why keep those dresses designed to turn tricks?
do you think you might someday get back down to a six?

my closet is lean, I have just three ties
but I can't complain, they're always my size

two pairs of shoes, these and another
like most shoes I own they were bought by my mother

unload the washers, load up the dryers
wait for awhile reading lost cat phone flyers

out to the curb, smoke one in the sun
and then to the table where folding is done

shirts piled here, a stack of jeans there
a pillowcase used to hide underwear

the whole world can see if it's cotton or sable
when your wardrobe's laid out on the laundromat table.

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