The friend of a friend of mine commissioned — if
you can call it that, where twenty
bucks and Lou Reed’s
Berlin stand in as payment — from a friend
of his who worked in machine
shops a custom-
welded foraging tool he put to good work Jacques
Cousteauing through the leagues of cast
offs, discards, used-ups,
and general rot that poured daily into urban Dumpsters,
bearing him ass-up, aloft, down alleyways
like a well-engineered
system of locks. We hear he’s prospering. That low-end
Canadarm practically prosthesis now,
enabling the acquisitionally
challenged to dive in head first. So, one of these, then;
a soldered something they only made one
of, an imagined gadget
no one should be without that reaches corners we can’t
and serves as counterweight to Bishop’s “Art
of losing isn’t hard
to master.” Finding what it is we lost, want, or most need’s a tougher
nut, but valuing the devalued might
get me it faster.