Honoring Michigami

Your castoffs keep invading me.
I spit them back.
Shreds of red, green, blue,
yellow, pink, purple
and every shade of plastic.

Straws, bottle caps, chintzy toys.
Shards of spoons, forks.
Jagged objects with unknowable pasts.
And endless beige tips of mini cigars—
some intact, some in tatters.

Disintegrating beads
of Styrofoam
threaten to live forever
even as they choke me
and lodge in the bellies of fish.

Once bred to tantalize,
to feed beastly obsession
with convenience,
toxic relics now lurk
within seafood on your table.

Remember.
We are kin.
You too
are invaded
by all this.

Virginia Small is a Milwaukee-based poet and journalist. Beauty and Stillness: A Journey Through Japan, a book of her haiku and photographs, was published in 2026. Her poems have appeared in About Place Journal, We' Moon 2027 Datebook, Kalliope, and other national and regional publications and anthologies.