This year will be the twentieth anniversary of San Diego City WorksPress. In the lead-up to this and the publication of Sunshine/Noir III: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana (in 2025), The Jumping-Off Place will be featuring some of the highlights from City Works Press’s many publications.
The poem “Washing Clothes: A Brief History” by Jackie Bartley appeared in City Works Press’ anthology Lavandería: A Mixed Load of Women, Wash and Word edited by Donna J. Watson, Michelle Sierra, and Lucia Gray-Kanga.
First came rock with its memory of fire and storm, of water’s hard knuckling. Then clothesline’s ancestors, bush or tree. Both extant, still useful. Followed by upright posture, the stick--tree branch or femur, splinters in the palm. The cold hands. The wash tub. The lye. The beginnings of lament stirring, the liquid dream of the wheel. Next technology’s leverage, force amplified, the wringer’s twin spokes, blind inanimate lovers turning like mollusks into themselves. And basements cool in summer as metal drinking cups. In winter, secretive as the body’s own dark cave. On clotheslines, ghosts galloping in the breeze. Mock crucifixions pinned at the sleeves. Tethered angels, wingless, no head for prayer. Sheets shuddering in their nakedness. The monotonous sentences of underwear. Then electricity and gas, the wilderness tamed, the washer’s wordless purring, the dryer’s swirling warmth and muffled snore. Erosion’s famous fable, the story untold; the berry, the grass, the blood. Unspoiling, unsoiling image, likeness of us all.