At the Car Wash

In his chapbook, At the Car Wash, Arthur Russell investigates and cross-examines his experiences growing up and working in his family’s small business, a car wash located in Brooklyn, New York. The poems begin with the physical plant and the men who work there, and the family relationships, particularly Russell’s relationship with his father, the inventor of the conveyorized car wash and the owner of the business. The voice is often unsparingly frank, as in “How to Replace a Toilet,” and sometimes lyrical, as in “Mom Would Be a Cardinal.” The poems find their evocative power and resonance in Russell’s willingness to drill down deeply into the minutiae of everyday life in an unquestionably unromantic setting and to find both beauty and belonging. As he says in the final line of “The Jetty,” the final poem in the book— “I will never leave this place.”