Self-Portrait as Sisyphus with Litter Pickers
To love a city is to know its street trash.
Our new neighborhood burps it up hourly,
population quadrupled by condos crawling
up overnight, humans and heavy machinery
making mayhem with mud, Tastykake wrappers,
cans of Coke and Fanta, traffic-flattened
to the slimness of dimes.
Our street trash collages resist metaphor:
cardboard seltzer case wrapped in a torn shirt,
overflowing with fat green dog poop bags.
Hello Kitty sneaker boxes stashed with pink tissue
and empty Corona bottles, some smashed to glitter.
I have spent my life cleaning up after others—
kids’ vomit splattering soccer wallpaper, puppy pee,
student essay revisions in the tens of thousands.
Suicide attempts of my beloveds.
I stay in my lane, cover one city block.
My litter pickers amaze me with their scalpel
like precision, become an extension of my arm,
my OCD and optimism.
The 10-dollar claw grips the most resistant
cigarette butt, the heftiest bag of McDonald’s waste.
I release all into the empty clean of my garbage bag.
What does it matter that more will roll right back
down our hilly street tomorrow?
When I reach the top of our block, finished for the day,
I am dirtier, purer.
VA Smith
VA Smith’s work has appeared widely in literary journals, among them: The Southern Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, West Trade Review, Burningword Literary Journal, ONE ART, SWWIM, Quartet, and Third Wednesday. Her third book, Adaptations, was published by Green Writers Press in 2025. Her chapbook, Urbanity, is forthcoming from Seven Kitchens Press in late 2026. VA serves as Poetry Editor of River Heron Review. Her bliss is writing, cooking, city walking, yoga, and loving on friends and family. Visit her Instagram and YouTube @vasmithpoetry.
