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Thursday, April 26, 2012

REUSE, RECYCLE, REGURGITATE

by Crystal Simone Smith


There’s a set-aside broken teacup look you shall receive if you mention Wal-Mart. Please Note: We have driven twenty-two miles west to the local farm to kindly request any hay that may no longer be suitable for nesting the grain-fed quails. We have taken this hay and soaked it for days in spring water and dried it for many more in the sun. During these days we have taken up weavery at the arts center. (The truth is you can self-produce almost anything you will ever need). We have whittled the handle from old firewood, bundled and tied off the hay. All for the good sense not to support a wicked, monstrous monopoly that’s making little Chinese women do this for FIFTY CENTS A DAY!

Source: 123RF Stock Photos

Reuse, Recycle, Regurgitate Response

Please Note: While you are a finer citizen than I for not supporting this, I should explain that oil prices will not allow me to drive twenty-two miles anywhere. Also, the art center class sounds enriching, but like spring water, expensive, and lastly I’d be hard-pressed to find some spare hours in the week to dry hay and whittle wood. I’m certain a $4.00 broom will kill no one any more than the $24.00 local quail one would consume in the Franklin Street Bistro and regurgitate in the bathroom. Besides, the fifty cents a day may pay for dinner for an entire Chinese family, rice, mainly, but nonetheless nourishment they will ingest and keep down.


Crystal Simone Smith is a graphic designer, artist, and poet. Her poems have appeared in The African American Review, Louisiana Literature, Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora, Southern Women’s Review and are forthcoming in Spillway, Nimrod, and Alimentum. Her work was nominated in 2011 for the pushcart prize. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte.
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