The Recycle Yard
by Taylor Graham


In which of these cheese-yellow bins do I
put blue bottles? Where does plastic go?
Aluminum cans mount the conveyor belt,
its fins inexorable as Wednesday. Card-
board goes around the corner, paper
(sorted by color) in the main shed, piled
to the ramparts with shredded invoices,
loose receipts. A demolition derby, front-
end loaders scooping masticated junk-
mail sprawled on concrete. All these ghosts
of trees, with a chance of starting over.
At last I’m unloaded, weighed out, paid,

I’m on my way under a sky that isn’t
California clipper blue, but an over-
metro haze that longs to try again
for clarity. I drive off, recycling
carbons in my wake.






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