American Life in Poetry: Column 537

American Life in Poetry: Column 537
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
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 tshirts
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.
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
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7/6/2015 Gmail American
Life in Poetry 537
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=79b965383d&view=pt&search=inbox&th=14e63e49b5998b9e&siml=14e63e49b5998b9e 2/2
of English at the University of NebraskaLincoln.
Poem copyright ©2014 by Anya Krugovoy Silver, “Doing
Laundry in Budapest,” from I Watched You Disappear: Poems, (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2014). Poem
reprinted by permission of Anya Krugovoy Silver and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The
Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant
in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 20042006.