by Erin Murphy
The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. I had to go to the laundromat last week because my washing machine was broken. Just a sock stuck in the drum, an easy fix. The repair guy said Whatever you do, don’t get rid of this beast—they don’t make ’em like this anymore. It’s 43 years old, came with the house. Now that I said this, it will surely die for good tomorrow. I met one of my best friends in a laundromat. Hadley, Massachusetts, summer before grad school. We got to chatting, and I said, Hey, I found a secret swimming hole. Wanna go? So we rode bikes through a farm field to a patch of sand on the Connecticut River. Back then laundromats were my only option. A pricier place in Mount Holyoke was also a bar. It had a clever name, like Suds & Duds or Wash & Slosh. Another in Amherst had a game room, so you could shoot pool or play pinball. I prefer a no-frills retro laundromat where strangers sit on plastic bucket chairs and watch the random choreography of shirts and pants. The suspended time when magic happens. Or did before cell phones. The repair guy says the key to my washer’s longevity is the center agitator. The new ones have electronic sensors that trigger error codes. Agitator. We need all the agitators we can get right now. But maybe when there’s too much to protest, we end up protesting nothing at all. Like that study that found people prefer a handful of ice cream flavors instead of dozens. Choices can be paralyzing. On inauguration day, he canceled lower prescription drug prices and birthright citizenship, withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and declared there are only two genders. And that was just the warmup. Backpfeifengesicht is German for a face that needs to be punched. I just learned eierschalensollbruchstellenver
Editor's Note: This poem is a companion poem to “Insomnia Chronicles XXVI” published Sunday in Rattle. Erin explains, "These ‘Insomnia Chronicles’ are part of a series of poems dramatizing the associative connections sparked by sleeplessness. I imagine there will be plenty of insomnia for the next four years."
Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry is Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024). She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review.
