Attécoubé, Côte d’Ivoire

Hoist laundry on your head. Walk eight kilometres in the still-dark. Unravel on the riverbanks of Banco Forest. Glove hands in bags, thin as gauze. Herd garments to station — stack of sand-filled tires with slabs of rock atop. Soak each piece. Scrub with soap. Beat against stone. Soak. Scrub. Beat. Repeat. Soak. Scrub. Beat. Repeat. A woman glides along the river’s spine, basin brimming with bricks of palm oil soap. Odour of soursop & potash floats from the steel drum. Reach for another brick. & another. & another.

hands sing over stone
sleeves of foam linger in the
river’s greening mouth

A mob of pagne tinsels the river, the buttons like crushed ice. Fingers chafe, rough as jute. Gather wet clothes, wring & dry them. On grass. Or guard rails. Or the steel lattice, where odours of exhaust & trash overwhelm. Afternoon peters into evening. Tempers flare in air banal as cotton. You heat the iron over coals, press clothes & fold. Walk home in the brewing dark. Eat, sleep, wake. Repeat yesterday today. & tomorrow. & the day after.

shadows rise & fall:
pale replicas you shed like
this dawn-to-dark husk

O, meticulous men & women, who rise in dawn’s hushed creases, still dreaming in their mother tongue, who weep soap until they breathe the gleaming edge of evening. O Fanicos, who never sleep, who keep dreams afloat for their sons & daughters.

the musk of marsh &
swill dissolves into your veins:
labour’s sweet stench