by Jason Morphew
Where is the awful poem
from the journal that rejected me
about Texas made of plastic bags
swirling in the ocean?
It was so long and so bad
I crossed out everything superfluous
leaving only facts foraged from newspaper.
I’m delving for those details now
diving through my desperation
which is the waist
high rejectoral college stacked by the toilet
in my office.
I don’t need facts or poems
to pack my bags for plastic Texas
to catch my mail from passing planes
sliding each jagged journal
into its own sack and sinking
slowly in my independent palace
I will do the sea a service
obscuring shocking garbage
revealing a new and relevant Atlantis
where invisible poems downward
twist forgetting ever wanting
to be seen.
About the Author
Jason Morphew started life in a mobile home in Pike County, Arkansas; he is a Lecturer in English at UCLA. His book-length collection of poems dead boy is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil; his second poetry chapbook, What to deflect when you’re deflecting, has just been released by Poets Wear Prada. As a singer-songwriter he has released albums on the labels Brassland, Ba Da Bing!, Max, and Unread. He lives in Laurel Canyon.
Polyethylene heat-welded sculpture made to demonstrate the great oceanic gyres created by waste. This artwork is part of a collection titled “The creation of Plastikos” by Simon Max Bannister. Wikimedia Commons
