How Long Until No Longer This? Notes on Incomplete Research into How Long it Will Take These Mylar Balloons in the Shape of a 5 and a 3 to Decompose Entirely

This poem is from “The Garbage Poems,” a series of poems from a forthcoming book of the same name in which poems are created using the text transcribed from garbage found at local swimming holes. The project is interested in themes of chronic illness, concussion, queerness, climate crisis, garbage, cultural constructions of "litter," swimming, embodiment, and joy. Using only words taken from source text found on garbage collected from beaches and lakes near Ameliasburgh, ON, this poem explores the timelines of human-created objects and power structures.