Plastic Poetry 002
Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center
In April 2021, Free Plastic and O, Miami installed their second in a series of public art works entitled Plastic Poetry. Plastic Poetry is a series of community activations that mashes up an educational workshop on the realities of recycling and plastic pollution with community/beach cleanups, public art, and poetry.
Located inside the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center hangs an excerpt from Cherry Pickman’s poem “Tropical Disturbance”. The five-inch tall polypropylene letters are rendered in 6.2 pounds of recycled post-consumer plastic and plastic pollution harvested from a beach cleanup held at the Nature Center on February 18. 2021.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center’s Plastic Poetry Statistics
Online Workshop: February 18, 2021
Workshop Participants: 34
Beach Cleanup: February 27, 2021
Cleanup Participants: 12
Pollution Collected: 50 lbs
Plastic Reclaimed: 12.84 lbs
Plastic Recycled: 6.24 lbs
Tropical Disturbance
The fog grows the world shrinks its edges
soften then dissolve whichever mistakes you choose
to make make them quickly what they say
is true when you lose one sense the sound
of gravel ticking across tile the palm tree quickening
its applause the mockingbird reciting its appropriated
vows remember that children scream
when they’re having fun that neighbors
are strangers with a proximal advantage
nothing is wrong yet
along the seawall tarpon pace across the Eastern Seaboard
the newscaster draws circles around cyclones did you
remember to drain your standing water the ocean
is always a shovelful away watch how the world
bubbles up through the limestone
Cherry Pickman is the author of Theory of Tides, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship. Her work has appeared in 32 Poems, American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Boston Review, Dossier, Indiana Review, Jai-Alai Magazine, and PEN, among others. Pickman is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program and lives and works in Miami. Learn more at cherrypickman.com
