Published by The Puddin’head Press
Stapled Chapbook, 35 pages
5.5 x 8.5 inches, 2005
$6.00
Praise for The Laundromat Girl
INTRODUCTION by Dan “Sully” Sullivan (Two Time Wicker Park Slam Champion)
Lee is ordinary. And I don’t mean that in a good way. I’ve searched these poems up and down and through the cracks of ink brawling across the white space for the secret, the key, to this young man’s writing. I have found nothing out of the ordinary. Read cover to cover and that’s just it…It took me awhile to pinpoint…but it’s his simplistic moment, the every time, the yesterday and today that Lee so eloquently captures the whole of.
It’s a Zen understanding that two minutes in a bookstore can be a thousand paths, an incredible tomorrow, and just as plain as the moment before. He deals with life not with a grain of salt, but the juice from a bitter orange. A thirty case of Old Style and an El train. A Laundromat and a Bears game. A salami sandwich and a bowl of Ramen. A jazz singer and a poet. A street or a page for you, the reader, to walk down.
He puts himself in this series of poems so as to be a recorder and a reflection. This compilation of Chicago working class poems is reminiscent of Sandburg’s Windy City years in its big shoulder curbside observation. If you had just entered the pearly gates of heaven Lee’s poetry would be there, but you’d find this book, a halo with dreams, on heaven’s train tracks contemplating jumping the ledge and burning all the way down like a Parliament light. So put a buck seventy-five on the transit card and join Lee on the green line train around the loop. When the doors open you’ll be surprised at which stop you jump off.
About Lee Kitzis
Lee Kitzis is a Chicago native and graduate of Columbia College Chicago who’s had his poetry appear in numerous publications. Some of which include: Afterhours, Ink, U-Direct, The Anti-Mensch, The Columbia Chronicle, and Chicagopoetry.com. He has edited The Anti-Mensch, The Anti-Mensch II, and several issues of Big Pen Magazine. “The Laundromat Girl” is his third book of poetry. “Buddha Smiling While the Cops Wail Outside My Window” which appears in The Laundromat Girl was previously published on chicagopoetry.com.
Contents
The Laundromat Girl
Sunday Service
Love Poem for Kristi
On Being a Poet
My Little Neruda Girl
Two Chicagoans
Love Poem for Alanna
Poets Always Fail
That Lonely Older Woman I See Around
Buddha Smiling While the Cops Wail Outside My Window
My Way With Women
My Family
Therapy or A Poem I’ll Give My Dad Next Father’s Day
Another Love Poem for Kristi or If You and I Were A Romance Novel
The Real Sounds of Lovers
Two People Talking To God
Love Poem for Jill
El Stops
Allison
A Good Laugh
For Grampa Marty
It’s Hard to Write a Political Poem
Excerpt
The Laundromat Girl
It’s a lonely life
as a Laundromat girl
Nothin’ to do
but watch clothes spin
in the Dexter Stack Cycle
and kids drowning
on the channel five news
counting down the hours
10 ‘til the doors close
11 when the cycles stop
I’m sitting
reading the Dhammapada
asking what Buddha would do
keeping an eye on my tighty-whities
Relax Lee
free yourself of attachment
a homeless guy
isn’t interested in
wearing your underwear
and I’m hoping
the cute girl across the way
spies me reading some Buddhist text
and she’ll think I’m a thinking man
and we’ll strike up conversation
and fuck back at my place
God I’m awful at this Buddhist thing
But she leaves
and it’s just me and the Laundromat girl
and the Bears losing
on TV
She’s short
stocky
Hispanic
black thick-rimmed
glasses
that “lonely librarian” look
as Jeremy and I
call it
and I imagine
I take her
into the backroom
behind the jumbo driers
and make love to her
and for that short period of time
she’s not a Laundromat girl
and I’m not in retail
and I’d say
some cheesy line
like
“You’re the fabric of my life”
or
“I think my laundry’s done”
and I’d load up my things
and walk off
at 11 on the dot
when the cycles stop
It’s Hard to Write a Political Poem
The news at noon comes on
1 dead in Macombe
2 new dead in Waukesha
It’s hard to write a political poem
then it’s weatherman Tom
it’s raining hard in Oklahoma City
and it’s 45 in Chicago
It’s hard to write a political poem
and the winning lotto numbers are…
up next Cybil Shepard…
look at how clean my whites are…
It’s hard
but so are the faces of the dead
in their military photos
and as Walgreen’s tells me about savings
and the Quaker Oats man tells me about Liberty Insurance
I picture the hard face of a 19-year-old kid
softening
as he lay
dying
under the sweltering sun
and dry heat of Fallujah
and it’s raining hard in Oklahoma City
while his family waits
and it’s 45 in Chicago
while his family waits
and it’s 12:57
and they’re talking about the weather
while I wait
typing a poem about the news
Visit Laundromat Girl on Facebook.
More books by The Puddin’head Press.
See our complete list of books.