The Washing Machine is Quiet on Blue Moons
by Francine DuBois
And frightfully loud on those moons made out of green cheese,
Or so she tells the children who ooh and aah, gyre and gimble,
In the midst of the hubbub of that damn washer
That shakes like an electrocuted Elvis or Carmen Electra's booty dance.
The youngest girl wants to sit on it, thinking it's a mechanical bull
That her daddy showed her at the bar one time before slurring to her
"Your mom rode that thing for five whole minutes one night,
And her legs wouldn't stop shaking for hours. That's the night
You were conceived and the first night of the rest of my life."
He then sent her with money to the cigarette machine and all
The guys thought it was so cute to see the six-year-old buy
Menthols for her old man. And now she wanted to tame
The washing machine, but the storyteller said it was dangerous.
The young girl sulks and things about blue moons,
Aching spheres of cerulean in the sky, and that song
"Blue Moon of Kentucky" that wailed from the jukebox the last
night
She saw her dad--it was in that bar, of course--and how the washer
Knew to keep quiet when Daddy's song came on.
Francine's Version -- Hezekiah's
Version -- Inspiration
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