22 March

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
No Junk, Please

I chanced a shocking but polite reply
to a compliment on the sinuous berry-red blouse
that may have been the brief, uneasy past
of a woman just my size:
"Thank you," I answered. "I got it at the dump."

I could construct a life around items gleaned
from the Leverett Transfer Station.

I could read last year's best-sellers.
My conversations' center of gravity could become
what everybody else was just beginning to forget.

I could store my second-hand laundry
in a spotlessly clean white wicker hamper.

I could write the story of my alternate life in a journal with kittens on the cover,
the first few pages ripped out, the rest left tantalizingly blank.

I could divine my alter ego’s future with a Mystifying Oracle Ouija Board.
I could assess my prospects in modern-day alchemy
with an Erlenmeyer flask and a collection of experiments for children
published the year before I was born.

There is plenty of wear left in my neighbors' cast-offs,
a multitude of gently used identities to take or leave.