Thoughts While Taking Out the Trash
I recall reading somewhere
how styrofoam will outlive
us all, and that there’s an island
twice the size of Texas
swirling into shape
out in the Pacific,
made up of all the garbage
and debris that just won’t
break down, much like how
planets are formed, space-shit
spinning in the universe’s
darkness, drawing each other
in until a globbed sphere begins
to emerge. It’s a continent
no one wanted to discover—
no enthusiastic “land-ho!”,
no landmarks named for kings,
no bays or beaches named
after its founders, no flags
planted to declare it
for the motherland. I wonder
if it’s dense enough to walk on,
or if I would sink right through
like thin ice. I try to imagine
the smell and shudder—
the stench of my apartment’s
dumpster alone makes my face
screw up like a hermit crab
retreating into a too-small
shell, and I think that twice-
Texas-sized floating trash
island that’s still growing
and will outlast humanity
is perhaps the only place
I know of that’s maybe
worse than Florida.
Ariel Francisco is the author of All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017) and Before Snowfall, After Rain (Glass Poetry Press, 2016). Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, he completed his MFA at Florida International University in Miami. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016, Fjords Review, Gulf Coast, PANK, Poets.org, Prelude, Quiet Lunch, Washington Square, and elsewhere. He lives in South Florida (for now).
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