“sixty-six trash odes came to life in February 2019 and was resurrected July 2021 at the Sundress Academy for the Arts Residency. In that February, I collected every piece of landfill trash I would have otherwise tossed. At the end of the month, I taped the trash to my wall and wrote to each morsel. The first iteration was mostly small bits of lines, a chunk of text that also felt disposable. I wasn’t sure what I had in mind for it. But as if the poem had been composted, I found it in my drafts at the writer’s residency—I could see the life in it. I then reworked the odes in the liminal space of each item, letting the form dictate when the page was finished. I hope you are able to find surprise and even joy in the reflection and grief of our linear economy.”