WORTHLESS

by B. Fulton Jennes

ID 10587676 © trekandshoot | Dreamstime.com

 

November 12, 2025 – U.S. Mint strikes final circulating one-cent coins.

 

At 10, I culled pennies from my plastic purse, 

dropped them into the bathroom’s metal trash can,

savored each clang. Their removal made room

for worthier coins—those with a silver sheen. 

 

Did my mother scold or slap at the discovery? 

I don’t recall. But her lesson stung and stuck: 

No small thing is worthless. A penny was more 

than a piece of comic-wrapped bubble gum,

more than a fiery cinnamon ball or palmful 

of chiclets spit from a vending machine.

It was copper—the metal that cloaked 

the Statue of Liberty. It bore Lincoln’s profile. 

It had history. It had value. It should be saved. 

 

Years later, still penny-obsessed, I scanned 

city sidewalks for coppery discs, bowed before

a speeding cab on 14th Street to pry one

from hot tar, banged heads with a woman who, 

likewise possessed, bent to snatch one from

the marble floor of Grand Central at rush hour, 

beat me to the grab, glared. I chided a teen who 

dumped a handful at a Madison Avenue bus stop,

gathered their discards from the pavement, 

added them to a five-gallon water jug at home.

 

Once I called in sick, boarded Amtrak south 

to the Philadelphia mint, watched behemoth

machines blank, anneal, strike pennies by the ton, 

a shimmering sea of copper, conveyed by forklifts, 

guided by back-braced men—such an earth-shaking, 

deafening to-do for something so small, so—what?—

 

worthless?

 

Today a two-century cascade of coins grows still.

Dignitaries make speeches, promise to auction the last

pennies struck on Earth. How foolish to spend 

2.7 cents to make something worth only a third as much. 

Even my mother would agree with those economies. 

Even my mother would hold her penurious hand, 

her sharp tongue, and see the wisdom of throwing 

such spendthrift things away.

The award-winning poems of B. Fulton Jennes are widely published. Her chapbook Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award; another chapbook FLOWN was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook Dirty Bird & Myrt will be published by Dancing Girl Press in the spring of 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer.

PEBBLE MINE / SOCKEYE SPEAKS

by Pepper Trail

Spawning Sockeye Salmon, Lake, a photograph by Nick Hall at fineartamerica. A male sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) catches its breath after stranding itself in very shallow water, Hanson Creek, Lake Aleknagik, Bristol Bay, Alaska, USA 4th August 2008. 

     T***p officials concluded Friday that a proposed gold and copper mine in Alaska—which would be the largest in North America—would not pose serious environmental risks, a sharp reversal from a finding by the Obama administration that it would permanently harm the region’s prized sockeye salmon.
     The official about-face regarding the bitterly contested project epitomizes the whiplash that has come to define environmental policy under President Trump, who has methodically dismantled many of his predecessor’s actions on climate change, conservation and pollution.
     A final environmental analysis issued Friday by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found that Pebble Mine—which targets a deposit of gold, copper and other minerals worth up to $500 billion —“would not be expected to have a measurable effect on fish numbers” in the Bristol Bay watershed, which supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. —The Washington Post, July 25, 2020


My sisters, we are too many
The gift that we give, that we are
Is too generous
The rhythm of our lives, our faithful renewal
Is too reliable

To be valuable, we must be scarce
To be scarce, we must be destroyed
We will be destroyed

The gold, the copper
(You remember, that thin metal taste
      upon your lips in the sweet water)
That is scarce
That is valuable
For that, the earth will be moved
The mountains cut apart
The rivers choked in their beds

The gold, the copper
That can be taken, locked up, sold
Each gram worth more, until all is gone
Leaving nothing but the residue
The pure residue  -
"Money"

With that money, someday
It may be possible for the few
The very few
To buy a few ounces of our flesh
Our wild flesh

Nothing like it in the world, they will say

Nothing like it left in the world


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.