The Art That Remains

Love can have a dumpster aesthetic, scrap feelings flying
past the flap. I’m tasting as I search, trying jaundiced liquor in a jar
under the rumble of bridges, next to smiling billboards where
mini-van drivers become mesmerized by sexy ads and the vibration of it all.

That sanitized art they watch sinks my passion so I’m left to look
at broken glass, factories closed, graffiti of lives left in heaps, unspoken.
The head of a baby doll, marked all over with a pen, my jealous face
both carry the same scrawling message: we’ve been replaced

by shimmers of heat, by the sparkles of lies whispered in back alleys
by a clean-faced doll. But there is still some gum (with bits of dirt and hair in it)
a shared token, a worry stone, a fossil from the lost world pressed in
my palm.

I cannot escape this loss, this puddled sun, this dumpster of time tossed
like a rotten orange, leaving me with nothing but the death-smell of the empty bin.

Those others can afford their sins. I’ll walk their streets, watch them look away.
I’ll beg for rusty pennies, rustle through their dumpsters for bits of uneaten life.
And when the moon rises, I will see the shine in the broken bits of glass.
Nothing will pass me by. I’ll memorize every piercing odor, each vivid stain.
The grease of evening, the skitter of rats, the smiling doll, the bottle half full.

My sins don’t go anywhere…they just stick to the bottom of the bin, and
wait to pull me in. I twist and trim, bend each part together. Find us in the
thing I’ve made. This is my art.

I’m so excited to be finally posting this. This is a collaboration with two amazing poets, Holly from Honkeycackle and Julie from the Buffaloe Pen. To make this, one of us started with the first line, sent it to the next person and so on. Julie came up with the title. It was a great experience. So much so, we’ve decided to start a blog about collaboration. Look for details in the near future. Oh, Holly began the piece with a phrase from an Easystreet prompt.