Consume/d
I.
I am losing weight, my mouth
is shrinking, my stomach is now
right-sized for my eyes
I have seen where everything goes
to die, things the earth cannot swallow
cannot return to dust
litter is landscape
& only unusable burns
II.
When I take out the garbage
I feel shame, my oversized
trash bags say greed, say own,
III.
before nightfall, what I thought waste
will be in someone’s home
or stomach.
In the morning I will
stare at my refrigerator
& ponder its rotten swell
From Blood/Sound (Central Square Press, 2019). Copyright © 2019 by Fred L. Joiner. Used with the permission of the author.