At the Sparkle Laundromat on Rice Street
Greg Watson


The teenagers are bored, having nowhere else to go, not
wanting to go home to the drab familiarity of housing projects
and apartment complexes. We too are directionless, but
directionless in the same place and time—between jobs,
between loves, between ambitions; we are loitering without
intent. Hank Williams echoes from a small dusty speaker,
quarters tumble from the change machine, pool balls click with
soft indifference. The ceiling-high windows are veiled with
steam, impossible to tell at first glance if it is summer or winter,
daylight or evening. There is no stampede of years here, no
memory rushing in either direction, insistent on its own
inherent beauty—only the rhythm of machines in cycle, that
constant turning without arrival. We could come back decades
from now, pick up where we left off, wait it out for one more
song before returning to the world again.