Poetry

Recycle


This poem is made of
100% reused characters,
recycled words.
It’s ego-friendly.
Its author is a golem
made of fibres and minerals
listed on cereal-box sides.
Oxygen and carbon
in his shirt have once
been trilobite shell,
scales on a diplodocus’ neck,
dust on the tunic of Isaiah
whose god commanded to beat
our swords into ploughshares
and foresaw the era of recycling.
It takes over the miracle
of metamorphosis,
reduces to mass production
the transformation –
ground mountain flesh
fusing into translucent glass,
the ugly silk-moth
becoming airborne.
For lack of raw material
postmodernism processes the past
which is sustainable,
but who has ever seen a cow
pooping flowers?
When a text burns unrecycled
it reprints itself in carbon
on its authors’ lungs
for future trilobites to feed on.

Anna Avdeeva recently graduated with a BA in Greek and Roman studies and currently lives in Ottawa.