The Family Business:Iris Cleaners
Some people have problemsdistinguishing a dry cleanerfrom a laundromat
but Mother wasn't meantto make her mouth a seam,wash blood out of sheetsor the piss of an aging man every weekand my belly is too full and my car is too newfor us to forget, so I will tell you
a laundromat is the one with the quartersand the dry cleaner is where workersfinger spots of wine like bruises.
Mr. Washington never failsto ask for a discountno matter how hard it isto get his chocolate stains out.
Mr. Francis always brings clotheswith foundation and eye shadowin the fabric of his collar,tells me of drunken nights;it's not hard to figure outwhy he winks.
Ms. Miller walks in with one earpunched by a steel rod,other lobe, four rings.
One day I ask herwhat it symbolized and she repliesIt's a statement I make [End Page 121] so people will realize that a womancan decorate her bodywithout being flooded with questions.
She quizzes me on what I unlearned about the patriarchyin the past week and loves when Mom has her clothes readybefore she's in the door.
Lately in these summer daysMom comes home braised with heat rashbecause if lucky, it's only twenty degrees hotter inside than out.
We could make a separate fortuneif she chose not to play good Samaritanbut she returns every quarter found in pockets.
Chemical scents follow her like a conscienceand her hands stay constant with cracksno lotion can recover. She used to count on fingersthe shirts and sweaters soaked with sweat and bloodshe washed to pay my cell phone bill.
I thought she was just imposing guilttill when working one daya man with a snarl slick with spitfull of English words Mom didn't know,but felt, threatened to sue for the stubbornspot of wine he let sit for weeks,the jacket he left at a hotel but blamed usfor losing, surely unable to defendourselves, Mom barelyfive feet tall, too politeto wipe his spit off her chin.
Two weeks later, a brick without a headto fly toward breaks the window in the middleof the night and we can no longerbe proud without lookingout of place. Mom doesn't callthe cops and pays extrato fix the window by Monday. [End Page 122] If I save myself in timeI won't be lost in this businessof erasing everything
so I need you to remembera laundromat is the one with the quartersand the dry cleaneris where my motherwill give them back to youif you leave themin your pockets. [End Page 123]
Arhm Choi Wild is a queer, Korean-American poet who grew up in the slam community of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and went on to perform across the country, including at Brave New Voices, the New York City Poetry Festival, and Asheville Wordfest. Arhm is a Kundiman fellow with an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and was a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize in 2019. Their first book of poems, Cut to Bloom, was the winner of the 2019 Write Bloody Book Contest. Their work appears in the Daring to Repair Anthology, The Queer Movement Anthology of Literatures, Barrow Street, The Massachusetts Review, Split this Rock, Hyphen, Foglifter, Lantern Review, F(r)iction, and other publications. They work as the Director of the Progressive Teaching Institute and as a Diversity Coordinator at a school in New York City.
