8.3 BILLION METRIC TONS

by Sharon Dolin 

8.3 BILLION METRIC TONS

Enough to cover the country of Argentina.
In my shoes my watch my sun-glasses, in my clothes
my bras my costume jewelry, in my shampoo
in my hair, in the pen I use to write this
in the air conditioner I have turned on after
walking my dog in Riverside Park, in my rugs
in my reading glasses probably in my skin, in my ocean
in my pond, in the packages I throw away and in those
I keep. In the movies when the secret word was whispered
to the graduate how esoteric then to become so common
as to be overlooked.
                                                  In my phone in my food in my milk
container, in my thoughts, the mouse, the transparent
window through which I hold my mother’s face.
In the fish I eat that eat from the sea, in Antarctica
in ice floes in my pencil sharpener in my teeth.
                                                   Rigid though the word means malleable—
elastic—how did that happen? In the fires of the poor,
in between my words and toes, most degrading most
enduring when nothing but radioactive beetles are left.
Rhymes with mastic—how much of it have I chewed,
how much of it have I spewed.

Sharon Dolin is the award-winning author of six poetry collections, most recently Manual for Living and Whirlwind (both from the University of Pittsburgh Press). Her translation from Catalan of Gemma Gorga’s prose poems Book of Minutes was published by the Field Translation Series (Oberlin College Press, 2019). Her memoir Hitchcock Blonde is forthcoming from Terra Nova Press in Spring, 2020. She is Associate Editor of Barrow Street Press and directs Writing About Art in Barcelona.