Biodegradable

Rain blessed the county this year
& the Los Angeles River
flushed out nearly 13,000 pounds of
mattresses, carts, turpentine,
steak knives, bottle caps, opioids,
& bald, eyeless doll heads
onto shorelines as far as Seal’s Beach.
All that the Valley had chucked was laid bare,
was picked through by a volunteer Cleanup
Brigade—like readers parsing a gnarl
of poems. Even primordial Styrofoam
from my decades-old Walkman box
was exposed—the dirt over the white
had finally eroded. Even this piece of former me

mingled with the rush, the beached.
Then—Jim on the crew
stabbed & stuffed it into an orange bin,
fed the full bin to mealworms.
Then—some county hand
fed that toxin-less feedstock to fowl,
to farmed fish. Oh! I remember hurling it
from mom’s Nova—at her live-in boyfriend
invasion: at Mustache Tony & Butch,
at the young guy I worked with at Home Depot
& Red-Head smiles, at Old Cowdude
& Pathological Paul. & when Pathological
Paul moved out—a rush of tears
blessed my face & began to dislodge them all.

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Jennifer Jean's poetry collections include Object Lesson (Lily Books) and The Fool (Big Table). She's also released the teaching resource Object Lesson: A Guide to Writing Poetry (Lily Books). Her poetry, prose, and co-translations have appeared in POETRY Magazine, Waxwing Journal, Rattle Magazine, Crab Creek Review, DMQ Review, On the Seawall, Salamander, The Common, and more. She's been awarded a Peter Taylor Fellowship from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, a Disquiet FLAD Fellowship from Dzanc Books, and an Ambassador for Peace Award from the Women's Federation for World Peace. As well, she is the translations editor at Talking Writing, a consulting editor at the Kenyon Review, and a co-translator of Arabic poetry and organizer for the Her Story Is collective. Jennifer is the new Manager of 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center's Online Writing Program.