"My love is a hard-won landfill," by Hollie Dugas

My love is a hard-won landfill,

a busted orange peel covered in ants,
a postcard with a soaring eagle
never returned. My love is a handful
of burnt matches, a discarded phone
ringing Amber Alerts. My love
is a hot tin roof, a hunting knife
at one with fur. I have no desire
to sweep this love out — bacteria
eating on the sweet of bodies,
a clutter of raccoons pillaging broken
eggshells. My love smells hazardous;
it warrants caution. It is a tiny
unlivable planet. There’s nothing
to see in my barricaded dumping
ground, walls graffitied with vulgar
words. Still, I treat my junkyard
as I would a museum, throw myself
into the library of trash, a plastic bag
floating her sea of ruin, and begin
my work because I believe a heart
can be remade. So, let me guide you
through the scrap metal and tires —
complete construction — my replica
of childhood, my rigged and rusty
go-cart, my precious heap of pollution.

Hollie Dugas

Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has been selected to be included
in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Redivider, Porter House
Review, Pembroke, Salamander, Poet Lore, Watershed Review, Mud Season
Review, Little Patuxent Review, The Louisville Review, The Penn Review,
Chiron Review, Louisiana Literature, and CALYX. Hollie has been nominated
for a 2020 Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets 2021. She has
also been a finalist twice for the Peseroff Prize at Breakwater Review, the
Greg Grummer Poetry Prize at Phoebe, Fugue’s annual contest, and has
received Honorable Mention in Broad River Review. Additionally, “A Woman’s
Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review
Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017). Most recently, her poem was selected
as winner of the 22nd Annual Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize at CALYX,
in addition to the 2022 Heartwood Poetry Prize. She was also a finalist in
the Atlanta Review’s 2022 International Poetry Contest. Currently, she is
on the editorial board of Off the Coast.

Headshot: Holly Schullo

Photo Credit: Tory Romo