Trash

Refuse/Refused

“Unfazed by waste I’m on top
of the heap. I’m blessed. I’ll die
in riches, a glutton in haste.”

By Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Image by Robin Collyer

Hahaha, he laughs, the bald boy, veteran ragpicker who’s sitting on a pile of junk, toes splayed, while around him strays snarl or sleep, his pets, his messengers from the world outside, bound to this dump by its bounty, hahaha, there’s nothing you can’t find here, he laughs, this mini-lord of litter, here’s a part of a ladder to dreams, haha, a broken keyboard to miracles, a magic shoe with a hole in its sole, a silk bra of torn desires, haha, haha, and mountains of bags and more bags that leak their stink like joss sticks offered to me, hahaha, the city’s memories are strewn at my feet like flowers of pus hahaha, so much waste and so much want, like the cut-up girl in that bag, that big one near the car parts, she’s refuse now because she refused to sleep with him, hahaha, this is my kingdom come, haha, this is your kingdom come, come, come, don’t refuse your part of it.

I awoke to the sound of rustling and smoke swirling from dying campfires. The festival ground was like a cremation ghat, deserted; I looked around, I too was deserted, the sky fell flat on the earth, on the sacred river flowing like a distant snake. I stood and looked around. Debris everywhere. Plastic bottles, rags, single sandals strewn as families left in haste so as not to awaken sleeping ones like me. And shit and smoke and the rustling; rustling everywhere as the cold breeze blows. Rustling billowing plastic bags; torn bags that skitter across this desolation like abandoned dreams. Into this desolation I must enter, not as mother, not as grandmother or aunt or sister, for my womb’s a shriveled bag, an empty purse; I walk now as refuse that has refused family, religion, name. Strays bark through the rustling. Into this great rustling I will walk, make my home, become rustling, a torn plastic bag tumbling. I don’t worry.

Trash has no home; it is everywhere; it haunts. Trash is the renouncer’s last desire, the last touch of homeland.

Still waters run deep, they say, but it’s a lie, floodwaters run deeper still. See me, a giant tree stretched horizontal across the land, flowing swift, my branches cutting up suburbs, my girth spanned by bridges that I’ve swallowed because somewhere else too many of my kind, the standing variety that is, were cut and carted off by logger cartels so the earth on which they stood slipped and fed my greed and I spread like washed rain over windshields, blurring everything.

I spread, a slit vein over embankments, a slit vein through streets, climbed the dainty stairs of houses, pushed cars along and felt them turning into rust inside me, and still I flowed, running deep and poisoned by a thousand desires. And, like you, not satiated, though I sucked in a thousand things then abandoned them along my path, my shining path shod with inverted stars that float above streetlamps submerged. But a small thing bothers me: bags that float, that carry the rubbish of a city, this refuse that refuses to sink but blobs over my body like a wig of undulating synthetic hair.

When I recede, for my time too will come, I’ll festoon ledges, trees, archways, windows, neon signs, you name it, with torn plastic bags, I’ll leave the city’s secrets fluttering high; as I die down I’ll mark the city with its flags of life, its trash.

Mirror Talk

A shard speaks:

Once I was intact
though cheap. Thick glass
lined by poison, shaded a burnt orange.
A mirror one foot by one, propped

against a turquoise wall in

a hovel in a slum.

I had my place.

I was a wedding gift: glass flowers cut
into my borders, dreams of paradise
drilled
in. Tawdry finery, you’d say, but who
are you to speak?

All was fine. I saw sex, need, sleep.
Each day I was left alone, each night
I saw sawdust kindled
to make a flame, to cook a meal, I saw them eat
the rotting food spiced hot. I saw it all. I have a billion

eyes. (All mirrors do.)
Until that night when he hit her once too hard and she hit
him with his shovel caked with grit.
He fell against me, against their dreams; I split.
I became a mirror cracked.
My body’s shards were gathered up like precious rain

before the cops came. I
was forgotten. Left behind. A piece too small, blood
staining petals of glass. I was a flower colored at last.

And now? I’m a mirror shard lodged in a dump
too deep to gleam or cut, or,
you could say, to make my mark.

I’m part of reclaimed land, the trash

on which this city is built.

But I’ll wait my turn to shine
again in a museum’s glow. Remember
the junk of Pompeii that’s held up as art?

Or the clay fragment that was once a cracked toy
in Mohenjodaro, that now lies in velvet light?

My time will come when
yours is done.

Nursery Rhyme

Eggshell, mutton bone,
Tea leaves, peach stone

All this and more
Each day they throw
On my home.

Tomato seeds, lemon rinds,
Potato peel, coffee grounds

I grind and guzzle and
Toil and trouble my way up

Through plenty. No rest for me.

Rice grains, carrot tops,
Cake crumbs, spinach stalks

Unfazed by waste I’m on top
Of the heap. I’m blessed. I’ll die
In riches, a glutton in haste.

Fish eye, goat’s balls,
Lamb’s blood, chicken gall

I’m Emperor of Discards. The world’s
Poor are picky, that’s what! Look around.
There’s food galore for everyone.

Cheese scraps, jam blob,
Toast crust, ketchup splotch

I’m a slave in paradise,
A worm named “Cardinal Enterprise” living
In a cathedral of rot. Like you. Start counting . . . .

Lettuce shred, prawn tails,
Milk drops, entrails . . .