we pass a junkyard
on our walk, a wreck
of twisted car husks,
rusted metal mountain
rising up behind the flag
defiant, flying high and huge
and red and white and blue
and blustering—
I call the vision analog,
this show of pride
in piles of trash;
but you correct: it’s scrap
—it’s worth something
worth as much as tiny glints
of light to hope collectors,
worth enough for holding
onto, holding us together
even as we come undone;
and you—who’s sifted dreams
to salvage from the river
and been unraveled
by it—you would know.
–
Talia Gordon is a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Chicago, working on a dissertation project about crisis and collective life in the postwelfare United States. They are also managing editor at Somatosphere and have had work most recently published by Pretty Owl Poetry and Vagabond City Lit. Talia lives in Detroit, Michigan, with Juice, a cat.