The three-bladed, dunce-capped agitator pulsed,

and steam billowed into the basement rafters.

Monday mornings, in a broth of soap and clothes,

my mother wielded her stick, bleached dun

and blunted with probing, then fed the works

through wringers to a galvanised tub.

Those summers the neighborhood blossomed

with laundry. Sheets snapped and dresses swayed,

a shirt dragged its cuffs through the dandelions.

By early afternoon, by the basket load

lugged in, the laundry stiff with sun was spread

across the kitchen table for sprinkling.

I remember my mother’s easy motions,

her thumb mostly over the bottle’s hole

and the clothes rolled tight and stacked

like cordwood in the cooler.

And when the light leaned into dusk—

when my father in the gap between his two jobs arrived,

dinner done, dishes washed, my father gone again,

the tiny, round-eyed television squinting

over us—my mother hauled from the hallway closet

the rickety wooden ironing board

and began her final Monday chore.

I sprawled across the rug

and picked at the pills on the hand-me-down sofa,

the whole house filling with the smell of heat

and watery steel, the ironing board’s creak,

the iron’s dull thunk and glide.

Last thing she pressed was sheets,

one set for each bed in the house,

each bed remade in my sleep

before she lifted me off the floor

and eased me away for the night.