Vox Populi
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Hayden Saunier: The Spin
My washing machine won’t operate
without the matte black hardcover
American Heritage Dictionary, Fifth Edition,
placed atop its lid. I no longer question this.
I’ve tested other titles—War and Peace,
The Oxford Shakespeare, Sibley’s Guide to Birds,
but nothing churns the agitator like
this fat tome, jacket off and covers closed,
as if both book and washer need a studied
privacy because deep mechanics are at play.
Each time a cycle spins, the words thrill
to every oddball meaning shaken from
origins and definitions, letters lightheaded
to find themselves new constellations
of black stars spangled in a white night sky.
Until, like riders giddy from a Tilt-A-Whirl,
they settle back, breathless, into the safety
of their carefully parsed lives. Still,
something has been exchanged. A sock
always elopes, seeking a more exciting life,
but that’s a price I gladly pay for how
these sheets and shirts take on
a knowingness that seeps into my skin
to tell me every single thing’s alive
with a secret life and we’re all inside the spin.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Hayden Saunier
Hayden Saunier is a poet, actor, and teaching artist living in the Philadelphia area. Her books include Wheel published by Terrapin Books.
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A true poem. And all the socks are happy somewhere.
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I quadruple love this poem, so cleanly written, the implications for the words, the laundry and the speaker wonderfully “spelled out.” Some of my favorite moments: “letters lightheaded/to find themselves new constellations/of black stars…” and this ending, “these sheets and shirts take on/ a knowingness that seeps into my skin/ to tell me every single thing’s alive…” I love me some extended metaphor. Wonderful work, Hayden Saunier~. Thanks, Michael!
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Thank you, Mary!
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Thank you!
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Love this witty poem.
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Me too!
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What a great (and deceptively wise) poem this is to start my reading day with! Thank you!
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Thanks, Syd!
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I read this today after having tangled with a new fangled refrigerator most of yesterday. Dead after only a few months, a product of too much computer tech when the old ones lasted for years without all the bells and whistles. I salute your scholarly pair but suspect the dirty words are still there.
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Hahahahaha
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Thanks for this! I read it as a parable of the relation of language to the work of renewal. But that’s WAY too schematic and abstract a reading. A dynamic and delightful poem!
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What true pleasure to start the day with this “witty smart” (nothing wicked here!) poem by a poet I so enjoy reading. How perfectly we travel with her imagination, how I love:
“(…)the words thrill
to every oddball meaning shaken from
origins and definitions, letters lightheaded
to find themselves new ” and
“Still,
something has been exchanged”!
I won’t close the lid to my Whirlpool again without thinking of this poem. Thank you!
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I love how the poem begins with the domestic and ends with the mystical.
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This poem was so joyful, that after a third spin through it, I tried on its eloping sock, and then read the other three of Hayden’s poems that Vox Populi linked with it. In them, clothes appeared again, she herself was a poignant atlas, life in its good and bad turnings found a home, all akin to the sock here: emerging by her words, out of the dark.
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Well-said, Jim!
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thank you. That the large lives inside the small gives me heart.
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What a delightful “upper” to read this poem as the news is so full of horror. I’ll never look at either a washing machine or a dictionary in quite the same way again.
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Thank you!
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A wonderful poem! (Perhaps it will stop me from cursing when future socks of mine go missing…)
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hahahaha
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Me neither.
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