Waste
There’s more waste than we use for the things we ordinarily use waste for, such as piling it on barges and sending them out to sea, tucking it under the surface like a layer of insulation, diamonds were waste once, and diamonds are valuable, although you can’t depend on waste turning into something of value, scraps of Virgil and Dante and what have you woven into beautiful potholders of waste, archives of waste, I mean exchanging your waste for somebody else’s that isn’t the same as yours is a good way to get to know people when you share your waste mashing it squishing it washing it squashing it sprucing it up slicing it up like debt that’s safer when it’s bundled up walled up when it’s sold off we only know it is waste when it needs to be disposed of.
Peter Leight is based in Amherst, MA. He has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI, Beloit Poetry Review, Raritan, Matter, and other magazines.