The lady of the cleaners

doesn’t care.

She really doesn’t care.

She writes your fate

in a steamed inferno

and presses with despair.

Three pins in mouth—

Judas, Cassius, Brutus,—

she greets you low

and points with tail,

like Cerberus,

to where the stained

and spotted go.

“Come again,” she groans

in stitched and stapled tones.

“Ma non torno vivo alcun

s’i’odo il vero!”¹

 

¹“But no one returns from here alive, if what I hear is true!” Inferno