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Permanent Press

By Nathan Mader

  • I’ve learned the difference
  • between regular and delicate
  • but haven’t yet come to terms with
  • setting the dial at permanent press,
  • which sounds both business

 

  • casual and fatalistic as if there
  • were a setting that determined
  • not just the presentation but
  • the quality of our lives. The reality
  • of such a setting reminds me

 

  • I was once more attuned to
  • the inner life of the dryer,
  • for what child could resist such
  • a place to hide while others seek
  • as a Whirlpool resplendent with

 

  • the danger that made it less
  • obvious, having been told by my mom
  • it was a space I should never
  • try to occupy. Her description
  • of a make-believe kid like me

 

  • spinning among the separated
  • cottons was vivid enough to turn
  • the Whirlpool into a hole in the house
  • that contained a zero-sum
  • game adding up to something

 

  • more real and specific than
  • the deadlier but secure hazards inside
  • the locked tool shed where one
  • might try to spin the mower’s
  • blades and separate themselves

 

  • forever. No one ever found me
  • inside the Whirlpool, the hide
  • and seek having long fizzled out
  • because it was and is a game
  • that has no beginning or end

 

  • just interested parties. I think
  • I’m still playing a version of it
  • with those people I thought I’d
  • grown out of, a chance encounter
  • sure to end with “your turn,”

 

  • betraying the lapse in my grasp
  • of the rules of the game the way a slip
  • of the hand on the dial this morning
  • has again shrunk my delicates
  • into clothes I struggle now to fit.

 

Photo by Flickr user Eric Flexyourhead

Read more

  • Nathan Mader
  • Issue 149
  • Poetry

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In The Garden
Vancouver 1965

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