Shannon Leaves this Friday, After His Paycheck Clears

This is a poem that my friend Meredith wrote. She sent me an email with 4 poems, and this was my favorite.

Shannon Leaves this Friday, After His Paycheck Clears

Vinegar washes pretty much everything out of everything
blood and sweat —all such acids made base
It takes the black out of black
and the yellow out of white
leaving the laundry soft, clean and gray
Some men are sweaty black jack jockeys
who insist on the low ceiling, the twilight dark
on the rooms filled with saucy old women smoking
and taking the hit over and over
winning and losing
both so hard and so good
Tupperware is pretty much proof of chaos
all these containers of petty, rotting things
Saved for hope of saving time, or keeping
Things which can’t be kept
refusing to be stacked or have their corners cleaned
Some men enjoy women like new boxes of crayons,
so pretty in their profusion and all their fresh tips
They are spilling all the time
hair out of clasps, breasts out of dresses, gasps out of lungs
their wrappers unraveling
then one is naked, finally
her tips blunting
Eggs are meant to cook lickety-split
The clear the white and the yellow
Fluffing on impact
To the butter and intense heat
Sometimes the steam smells like the coup
Shit, loam, wet feathers
That farm smell that gets stuck in the grooves of your boots
Some men wake up in empty beds
worrying that they are waking her, as they toss
her hair is on the pillow, brown with fading highlights
and remains still when he turns the alarm off, over and over
except she isn’t there