Dry cleaning, they sing and take
door-to-door confessions of recent sins
and indiscretions. Thrusting piles of dirty
laundry into the cantors' eager hands,
people are absolved and life goes on.

Soon, clean shirts return, like born-again
virgins, with reinforced buttons
and starched cuffs, masking the crusted folly
of a lonely housewife, or the raspberry
splatter of mismanaged alcoholic assault.

But it is all illusion, this false skin-stripping, this
purchase of stain removal, a temporary salvation.
True absolution is found only in the
final purgation of both conscience and closet.

Airing Dirty Laundry
by Teresa Dunat Banks


NOTES:

Appeared in the chapbook,
Resident Alien
May 2007.