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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

American Life in Poetry

Ted Kooser U.S. poet laureate, 2004-06

One of the first uses of language must surely have been to tell others what happened beyond the firelight, out in the forest. And poems that do just that seem wonderfully natural and human to me. Here’s Anya Krugovoy Silver telling us something that happened far from home. She lives and teaches in Georgia.

Doing Laundry In Budapest

The dryer, uniform and squat as a biscuit tin,

came to life and turned on me its insect eye.

My t-shirts and underwear crackled and leapt.

I was a tourist there; I didn’t speak the language.

My shoulders covered themselves up in churches,

my tongue soothed its burn with slices of pickle.

More I don’t remember: only, weekends now

when I stand in the kitchen, sorting sweat pants

and pairing socks, I remember the afternoon

I did my laundry in Budapest, where the sidewalks

bloomed with embroidered linen, where money

wasn’t permitted to leave the country.

When I close my eyes, I recall that spinning,

then a woman, with nothing else to sell,

pressing wilted flowers in my hands.

Poem copyright 2014 by Anya Krugovoy Silver from “I Watched You Disappear: Poems” (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2014), and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.