BY BRODY LANE SHAPPELL
Brief Guide to North Star Transfer Station
Looping in and out in a breeze
you won’t mind the greed
of flies or the stench of headless
caribous. The easy in, easy out
nature of our dumpsters
is arranged like a sleepy moon
and green as lichen. Don’t fret
about Mindful magazines,
a Silent Night song sheet, blank
notebooks, a tool box with no
handle on it. We’ll take the load
off you. We’re here for your
botched fixes, oversights,
user errors, Safeway plastic bags,
an Easy Bake Oven that overheats
or keyboards with no delete. Don’t
worry adding expired chicken to
insulation, busted batteries to grass
cuttings. In the landfill
good ole Mother Nature
will figure it out. Because our site
attracts addicts, trash trolls
and the homeless, we post guards
for your well-being. Note: we’re not
responsible for oven cleaner
foaming into a pack of berries,
dead ravens, foxes, voles or gulls. And
thanks for your continued use.
Fast Eddie
sucking on go go juice
under a god given sun
i haul oil pipes
through the arctic gates
brakes smelling
like rat piss
round oh shit corner
lost valley
oil spill hill
i keep that shiny side up
past pesky greenies
along fat creeks
and into spruce ash
moose bumper in front
nobody on my ass
i hammer down
for the north slope
safety straps
fooling in the wind
like no tomorrow
Brody Lane Shappell is a poet based in Fairbanks, Alaska and is currently studying long-distance as a PhD student at Texas Tech University in the creative writing program. Brody’s work has been published in journals such as Cirque and Southwest Review, and has work forthcoming in Antipodes.
Process Note: My intention is to create poems strongly grounded in a sense of place, whether it’s a public dump in the northern interior of Alaska, or the Arctic environment of the far north imagined from the perspective of a truck driver racing with his load toward an oil development site. Through research, talking with locals, and visiting the place I’m centering on and notetaking, my process is very much that of an investigative reporter, bringing to public attention relevant issues ranging from equity to problematic environmental attitudes.