All our poems are buried within us

and all we can do is dig.

– Jonathan Galassi

 

Remember when we dug up

the rusted carburetor in the garden?

The torn rubber tire tread, the dirt-encrusted

gears?

Planting squash and basil, we ate

the lead-steeped tomatoes

stubbornly all summer.

That’s what this kind of

excavation feels like:

junkyard scraps where I

should be planting.

Raia Small is a writer, activist, and eternal barista living in Flatbush, Brooklyn.